Constant-Time Pattern Matching for Real-Time Production Systems
01 January 1989
Many intelligent systems must respond to sensory data or critical environmental conditions in fixed, predictable time. Rule-based systems, including those based on the efficient Rete matching algorithm, cannot guarantee this result. Improvement in execution-time efficiency is not all that is not all that is needed here; it is important to ensure constant, O(1) time limits for portions of the matching process. Our approach is inspired by two observations about human performance. First, cognitive psychologists distinguish between automatic and controlled processing.