Kinetic Concepts' products are used in hospitals and in long-term care and home care settings. The company is moving to a three-dimensional design platform to reduce design time, to transfer design data throughout the company, and to provide a digital link to outside suppliers, said Barry Crandall, vice president of engineering at Kinetic Concepts. Stanford Examines Artificial Intelligence Researchers in Stanford University's Knowledge Systems Laboratory at the university's computer sciences department recently held an artificial intelligence symposium, which explored ideas and techniques affecting areas of applied artificial intelligence. Speakers surveyed the impact of research done at the Heuristic Programming Project, an early parent program of the Knowledge Systems Lab. The research was done on programs that employ heuristic reasoning, a term defined by George Polya, a Stanford mathematician, as the art of good guessing.
Heuristic knowledge is used by artificial intelligence programs for reasoning.
The equipment includes electronics, sensor technology and advanced servo controls that operate alongside traditional mechanical assemblies and components made of linkages and gears. Equipment for these applications is continually pushed for optimal speed and performance. Generally, these machines are custom designed. Some of the equipment used on this line was designed in-house. One aspect of the design involved a high-speed registration device for handling the clips of folded tissues that are placed in cardboard containers later in the process.