An Agent Based Fault Diagnosis Support System and Its Application

The efficiency and the effect of fault diagnosis are increasingly important for airplane flying on timetable and flight security. But the fault diagnosis within airplane is a complex and time consuming task. In this paper, an agent based fault diagnosis support system (AFDSS) is proposed to support ground crew in process of airplane fault diagnosis. This AFDSS consists of four kinds of agents: management agent, interface agent, diagnosis agent and data agent. Management agent serves as an agent name server and keeps the all agents' information, such as name, location, capabilities. Interface agent is the interface of AFDSS. Fault diagnosis user and expert have their own interface agent to interact with the AFDSS. Diagnosis agent encapsulates a diagnosis method. Data agent gets the required signals for fault diagnosis. All agents have the capabilities of communication and cooperation with each other. We study the AFDSS architecture, and discuss the development technology of AFDSS