An application of non-clausal deduction in diagnosis

A new technique is presented for computing minimal diagnoses of a system, based on Reiter's theory of diagnosis from first principles. Modifications to the technique are introduced that restrict the diagnoses generated to those representing single faults. This approach does not rely on a clause form representation (although it is applicable to systems represented in clause form), nor does it require generating the set of minimal conflicts. Experimental results are presented in which the performance of an implementation of these techniques on commonly used benchmark problems is measured. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd