QUAWDS: a composite diagnostic system for gait analysis

QUAWDS is a system for interpreting human gait. This task is complex because patients usually have multiple faults, and there is significant interaction between the components in the system. QUAWDS interprets a gait study by integrating associational and qualitative models of knowledge into a diagnostic system, taking advantage of the subtasks each kind of model can perform efficiently and effectively. An abductive hypothesis assembler is used to coordinate the subtasks. The result is a diagnostic solution that is 'locally best', i.e., no single change to the answer will produce a better solution.