  We propose the SupRB learning system, a new Pittsburgh-style learning
classifier system (LCS) for supervised learning on multi-dimensional continuous
decision problems. SupRB learns an approximation of a quality function from
examples (consisting of situations, choices and associated qualities) and is
then able to make an optimal choice as well as predict the quality of a choice
in a given situation. One area of application for SupRB is parametrization of
industrial machinery. In this field, acceptance of the recommendations of
machine learning systems is highly reliant on operators' trust. While an
essential and much-researched ingredient for that trust is prediction quality,
it seems that this alone is not enough. At least as important is a
human-understandable explanation of the reasoning behind a recommendation.
While many state-of-the-art methods such as artificial neural networks fall
short of this, LCSs such as SupRB provide human-readable rules that can be
understood very easily. The prevalent LCSs are not directly applicable to this
problem as they lack support for continuous choices. This paper lays the
foundations for SupRB and shows its general applicability on a simplified model
of an additive manufacturing problem.
