ABSTRACT
This paper describes a hardware implementation for
Means-Ends Analysis (MEA). MEA is an important Artificial
Intelligence (AI) technique that involves comparing a given
goal with a current task-domain situation to extract a
difference between them. This general problem-solving
technique had been implemented in software and used in
certain planners such as STRIPS and ABSTRIPS. We discuss
here hardware alternatives for each software subfunction. A
simple application of "getting a cup of coffee" is presented as
a test example. This hardware implementation is one
alternative implementing the MEA algorithm. Our main goal
is to illustrate the merging of AI with VLSI. The system is
presented at the functional or logic design level and is
technology independent. Logic synthesis and some design
optimization is done. No design is actually implemented as a
chip but a system consisting of functional blocks.