Means-ends analysis: a hardware implementation

The authors describe a hardware implementation for means-ends analysis (MEA), an 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. The authors discuss 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 for implementing the MEA algorithm. The 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 are done