Application of CBR and ANN in virtual-environment-based instrument development system

Virtual-environment-based instrument development system (VEBIDS) is a concept previously put forward by the author to develop instruments in a virtual environment (VE) generated by computer, with the support of appropriate computer hardware, software, virtual reality (VR) peripherals in accordance with specific applications. This paper first presents the integrated model of VEBIDS, then discusses the application of case-based reasoning (CBR) in it. To make the system more efficient and flexible, artificial neural network (ANN) is also adopted into the system to complement with CBR. Experimental results show that the combination of CBR and ANN in VEBIDS is satisfactory. With the appearance of more economical and user-affordable high-performance computers and VR peripherals, VEBIDS can become a very practical and useful tool in instrument development.