===================================== Welcome to the anonymous ftp site at Hugin Expert A/S, Denmark. ===================================== Hugin Expert A/S is the worlds leading expert system software house in construction and execution of Belief Networks (also known as Bayesian Networks, or Causal Probabilistic Networks). The HUGIN Expert System has successfully been applied to a variety of knowledge areas: - Diagnosis and repair on board unmanned underwater vehicles - Thunderstorm warning systems - Treatment of diabetes - Diagnosis in therapy in electromyography - Process control in waste water purification - Fault analysis in aircraft control - Control of centrifugal pumps - Image scene interpretation in computer vision and robotics - Early fault detection - etc. The HUGIN Expert System is currently in use at, among others: - Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, USA - NASA / Johnson Space Center, USA - USDA Forest Service, USA - Pacific Sierra Research, USA - GSF Medis, Germany - Nuclear Electric plc., Great Britain - Lucas Engineering & Systems ltd., Great Britain - Aalborg Portland, Denmark - Educational Testing Service, Princeton, USA - University of California at Berkeley, USA - Stanford University, USA - Columbia University, USA - University of Southern California, USA - Universita Degli Studi di Pavia, Italy - Universita di Bari, Italy - Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain - Open University, Great Britain - City University, London, Great Britain - Delft University of Technology, The Nederlands - Utrecht University, The Nederlands - Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan - Institut fur Betriebssysteme und Rechnerverbund, Germany - The Royal Veterinary Agricultural University, Denmark - Research Center Foulum, Denmark * * * * * We have two products: * HUGIN Explorer A graphical expert system shell, for construction and execution of Belief Networks. * HUGIN Professional In addition to the graphical expert system shell, this product contains the Hugin API, a C library containing all functionality of the Hugin System. The Hugin API enables you to integrate Hugin in your own applications. The current prices are: * HUGIN Explorer ECU 700 * HUGIN Professional 1 user license ECU 7500 2 user license ECU 11250 site license ECU 15000 All prices are quoted in ECU (European Currency Unit). Ultimo August, 1993, the exchange rate was 1 ECU ~ 1.15 US$. Currently the graphical interface only runs on Sun workstations. Medio September a Windows 3.1 version for PCs will be available. The API C library can easily be ported to other platforms. * * * * * In the /pub directory, you will find a demonstration version. **** Please, remember to set binary transfer mode! **** Contents ======== Directory /pub: hugin_demo_sun4.tar ------------------- A SPARC demonstration version of Hugin Explorer. This program runs under SunOS 4.X. ---------- The file is a tar file. To extract: tar xvf hugin_demo_sun4.tar This will create a directory called `HUGIN_DEMO'. See the `README' file in this directory for further information. hugin_demo_solaris.tar ---------------------- A Solaris version of the above. You may from time to time find other things in here. You will not have any use of these files (the files are encrypted). * * * * * For further information, please contact: Hugin Expert A/S Niels Jernes Vej 10 DK-9220 Aalborg DENMARK Phone: +45 15 66 44 Fax: +45 15 85 50 Email: info@hugin.dk * * * * * HUGIN Usage =========== Perry McCarty, Jr. Research Scientist, Lockheed AI Center Received: May 1993 At Lockheed's Artificial Intelligence Center we have had a site license for Hugin since around August 1991. Starting in January 1988, we began an internal research program on developing methods for decision-making in contexts in which uncertainty was present. We were familiar with the research in decision-analytic methods using belief networks, and at the time much of the research focus was on algorithms to make probabilistic reasoning perform rapidly enough to apply to large knowledge-based problems. We developed an in-house experimental testbed for evaluating these algorithms as they became known. One of the first was the Lauritzen- Spiegelhalter approach, a precursor to the algorithm currently in Hugin. At the time, with all of the interest in, and publishing of alternative methods, we expected that the Lauritzen-Spiegelhalter approach would soon be surpassed in performance. It was not until we received a draft of a paper by Shachter, Szolovits, and Andersen that demonstrated the essential equivalence of the many seemingly different algorithms, that we decided that the Hugin method (a refinement of Lauritzen-Spiegelhalter) appeared to be as good as any exact algorithm was likely to be. Lockheed's AI Center is in the Stanford Industrial Park, and we are in close contact with research at Stanford in probabilistic reasoning using belief networks. Based on my own familiarity with the field, and on comments from people such as Ross Shachter, a leading researcher in belief networks, Hugin is generally regarded as the best industrial strength belief net software package. Additionally, there is a large group at Aalborg that is performing leading-edge research in the area, and their ideas will soon be embodied in future Hugin releases. That is critical in a rapidly developing area such as belief networks. The internal research project that I led eventually proposed and won a contract for developing a diagnostic system for a real-time controller. The project very leading-edge, and is of medium risk. Our in-house software was adequate for testing and refining our concept, but was not sufficiently fast to meet the scale and computing demands of our contract. We chose to use Hugin, because we felt it was the software that was most likely to meet the demands of our application. We have been extremely happy with our choice. The software is blindingly fast (it is very impressive!). The MUNIN application resulted in the development of several techniques to improve efficiency, and we are thrilled that Hugin incorporates all of them. The support has been excellent. Even though we are several thousand miles from the Hugin group, we often get a response within 15 minutes to our E-mail requests. Distribution via ftp has enabled us to obtain updates as soon as they become available, at low cost, rather than waiting for weeks for packages to be delivered. Additionally, we are in close contact with participants in Hugin. We have been able to make suggestions as to enhancements that we would like in order for Hugin to become even better. Knowledge of features in future releases improves our planning for our project. A significant benefit of the Hugin site license is that we have also been able to download some of the research prototypes of Hugin software. As a research department, that has been very useful in testing ideas even before the techniques are embodied in the commercial product. We have been very satisfied with Hugin to date and have been very happy to inform others of the excellence of the product. Our current project has been a research project, not involving a large number of runtime-licenses. However due to the success of the project, a number of other departments within the group are planning to buy Hugin. Lockheed, Houston has already bought one for their NASA project and my guess is another 3-5 site licenses as a follow-on to our current project. I definitely see potential for growing to much larger sales after 2-3 years, and I am looking forward to the prospects. * * * * *