A Hybrid Case-Based Reasoner for Footwear Design

This paper details the way case-based reasoning has been used to aid footwear designers in creating new designs while maximizing component reuse. A hybrid system was created which uses an object-oriented memory model, neural networks for retrieval and fuzzy feature vectors to augment the basic case-based reasoning model. One of the main tasks involved in the design of any case-based system is determining the features that make up a case and finding a way to index these cases in a case-base for efficient and correct retrieval. This paper looks at the components of this footwear design system and how the various elements join together to create a useful system, in particular, how the use of fuzzy feature vectors and neural networks can improve the indexing and retrieval steps in case-based systems.