Introduction
1.1 Background Of The Study
Printers of any series are expensive that need proper and adequate maintenance so as to have long life span. Complex electronic devices that are neglected or not using correctly can result into serious and complex problems that will be difficult to solve for any investment. However, one can avoid the problem through proper setup, regular maintenance and purchasing of quality supplies and consumables(Nurudeen A. Iromini 2015).
Since the beginning of 20th century man has tried to give acumen to its favourite servant i.e. The computer. This idea gave birth to the newest branch of science known as the “Artificial Intelligence” which has revolutionized the whole concept of thinking. By definition, Artificial Intelligence is the area of computer science focusing on creating machines that can engage on behaviours that humans consider intelligent. Broadly speaking, Artificial Intelligence is the combination of computer science, physiology and philosophy. The grounding principle of Artificial Intelligence is to make computers more useful and independent. In this way, computers will achieve the capability to imitate the human thinking process and will be able for strategic decision-making. AI is about generating representations and procedures that automatically (or autonomously) solve problems heretofore solved by humans.
This aspect repeatedly enforced throughout the text by the many appearances of the terms knowledge
representation and manipulation. The manipulation includes the creation of new facts, concepts, and structures and so on.
Finally a better understanding of AI is gained by looking at the component areas of study, such as robotics, memory organisation, knowledge representation, storage and recall, learning models, common sense reasoning, understanding natural language, speech recognition and synthesis and a variety of AI tools. The most integral branch of artificial intelligence is known as the “Expert System”. It is defined as special software which attempts to replace the need of a human expert in any specified domain. For achieving human expertise, expert system replicates human reasoning process by deploying particular domain knowledge and techniques(Satvika, AkhilKaushik 2012).
According to Adesola, W. A. (2014)Expert System is a knowledge-based computer program comprising of expert domain about objects, events, situations and causes of actions, which emulates the process of human experts in the particular domain. It is also defined as an intelligent computer program that uses knowledge and inference procedures to solve problems that are difficult enough to require significant expertise.
Expert system to diagnose printers will assist not only the businessmen, but also schools and individuals that are making use of printers to increase the life span of the printers, boost business activities as well as having good print-out quality.
Moreover, this will also reduce the efforts of engineers because tampering with printers before locating problems will be drastically reduced(Nurudeen A. Iromini 2015).
1.2 Statement Of The Problem
When printers malfunction, it is often difficult tracing the causes of such malfunctions with respect to identified symptoms. Often, some of these faults are so minor that virtually every user is supposed to be able to handle them effectively without having to undergo the rigours of finding maintenance experts. In many occasions, the defects are perfectly eliminated by clearing the edge connectors and resisting the plugs and printer interface cards. Some diagnostic software such as Qapuls could also help in locating the causes of the problem.
However, the need for a reliable maintenance service cannot be over emphasized.
Since it is necessary for effective performance of any printer. Also it is pertinent to observe that there is many other preventive maintenance procedures that can be duly appreciate by the user which could minimize printer failure. This project has been designed and preventive maintenance in a “DO IT YOURSELF FASHION. It as well provides most of the salient information necessary to troubleshoot Epson printers.
1.3 Aim Of The Study
The aim of this project or study is to give expert knowledge or guide on the rectification of several known faults commonly developed by Epson printer and then develop an expert software system which will give any user the expertise knowledge to rectify the problem of his/her Epson printer.
This project will, therefore, briefly, look at the superficial culture of maintaining and troubleshooting printers with a view providing a number of analytical diagnostic steps that an operator could easily implement to enable him/her forge ahead when his/her printer suddenly develops a fault in the make of a printer job.
1.4 Objectives Of The Study
The objective of this project is:-
- To assemble a knowledge base that is common to the trouble shooting and maintenance Epson printers of diverse models.
- To prevent this knowledge in a diagnostic format such that will enable even non-expert identify and rectify minor problems of the printers especially. When the maintenance experts are not handy.
- To provide a printer maintenance teaching aid on the basis of DO IT YOURSELF. To emphasize the concept of preventive maintenance, especially as it effects fragile electronic of the ink of computer and printers.
1.5 Scope Of The Study
Even though there are several types − laser, dot − matrix, inkjet − and makes of printer Epson, OK1, NEC, CITIZEN, IBM, STAR, PANASONIC, etc,. For the purpose of this project, it has been designed to focus on the most commonly found (the Epson dot − matrix printer). This option was chosen with the respect to the fact that this could be regarded as the (economy class) hence need as much guide as possible both in preventive and guide as possible both in preventive and corrective maintenance.
It is worth being mentioned that the project has been designed and mainly flow on the Epson and similar. The area of coverage is not very wide, however, since volume of books and journals are regularly on the issue. Hence this work shall not attempt to be exhaustive.
1.6 Limitation Of The Study
The research work cannot contain all it supposes because of the following reasons or limitations.
Time Factor:
The aim that is given for the research on this study is very limited making it impossible to go further into the research.
Unavailability Of The Needed Information:
Seeing that only a few engineering firms exist in this country, it was difficult for me to get much informant for the work.
Limited Resources:
Because of the cost in transportation and other financial demands, it was not possible to get all the information needed for an elaborate work.
1.7 Definition Of Terms
Artificial Intelligence: is the area of computer science focusing on creating machines that can engage on behaviours that humans consider intelligent(Satvika, AkhilKaushik 2012).
Expert System:
According to Adesola, W. A. (2014)Expert System is a knowledge-based computer program comprising of expert domain about objects, events, situations and causes of actions, which emulates the process of human experts in the particular domain. It is also defined as an intelligent computer program that uses knowledge and inference procedures to solve problems that are difficult enough to require significant expertise.
Knowledge − Based:
The repository in a computer of an experts knowledge in a given domain as a knowledge base.
Domain Expert:
It is not easy to effectively replace the human being with just one expert system rather, a piece meal approach is used in which an expert system is instrumental for a narrow domain to mimic the human being in one activity at a time.
Reasoning By Induction:
If in an expert system past conditions and corresponding decisions reached are stored such that where a new condition arises.
The computer tries to march it with one of the previous condition, the approach is known as reasoning by induction.
Heuristic:
In general, the experience a human being acquires in any are of human endeavour are often in the form of rules of thumb which the human experts falls upon when confronted with a new but related situation. Such rules of thumb are known as heuristic in artificial intelligence terminology.
Inference Engine:
The knowledge of an expert can be represented as a set of rules that allows the computer to make human like decisions on the subject. In other words, a knowledge − base can actually be in the form of rules and not only in the form of tables of information which can also be used as alternative approach. The computer program written to shift through the set of rules representing human expert knowledge so as to reach a decision on the current situation can be referred to as inference mechanism or inference engine.
Trouble − Shooting:
Trouble − shooting is the ac of detecting and mending faults be it a hardware or software facility. To be good trouble shooter one needed to understand a system better than the average person.
Maintenance:
Maintenance is the performance of “prevention or remedial maintenance in order to prevent incipient hardware faults or to correct a hardware fault that has occurred”. We therefore define computer and printer maintenance as the prevention and correction of faults in the system or as knowing fault that has occurred or as knowing fault that has occurred or that fault can occur. And taking steps to ensure that the fault is eliminated.
Definition in this ways two kinds of maintenance can be identified.
i. Preventive:-
Knowing that a fault can occur and taking steps to prevent occurrence.
ii. Corrective:
When the faults has already occurred and it has to be corrected.
Also a definition of exactly what is (fault) or what constitute a fault must be known. In essence, for maintenance to take place a description of the normal fault (its cause) and its remedy must be known. It should be clear that maintenance to take place, a large information based about the fault to be diagnose has to available to service personnel. Also needed would be the tool, both of these items are discussed in this project. When take within the context of computer, maintenance and hardware maintenance. The terms “hardware” in the brain, respectively to the brain while a software fault might be equivalent to mis information.
Knowledge engineer is a specialist who works with experts to capture the knowledge they possess in order to develop a knowledge base for expert system and other knowledge from experts and then builds the knowledge base using an iterative, prototyping process until the expert system is acceptable.
