Human-centred intelligent systems and soft computing

This paper considers the abstract features of human/machine interaction systems that are required for the production of intelligent behaviour. A conceptual architecture is proposed for a subset of intelligent systems called human-centred intelligent systems (HCISs) and it is argued that such systems must be autonomous, robust and adaptive in order to be intelligent. Soft computing is proposed as a promising new technique that can be used to build HCISs, and examples are presented where this is already being done. Finally, flexibility is defined to be a combination of the often-conflicting requirements of robustness and adaptability, and it is argued that the right balance between these two features is necessary to achieve intelligent behaviour.