While work is under way in the industry to develop internal tools that support life-cycle design, one of the largest efforts in the world is being funded by ARPA, the DoD's (Department of Defense's) research arm that sponsored the development of the Internet some 25 years ago. In 1995, ARPA will spend about $750 million on a massive, multiyear research effort to improve design and manufacturing. Part of this push includes the development of tools to support the design and manufacture of CEM (complex electromechanical) devices. These CEMs are often highly complex products that combine multiple technologies such as optics, electronics, microprocessor control systems, and electromagnetics.
One important piece of ARPA's push is MADE (Manufacturing and Automated Design Engineering)--to develop tools that will enable different steps and partici
pants in the life cycle to talk to each other and share knowledge. Currently in the second of its three years of funding, MADE has three specific goals:
-- provide better tools for life-cycle design
-- integrate MADE tools with each other and with legacy systems such as CAD
and CAM models
-- distribute MADE tools via the Internet for collaborative research
worldwide
The first phase of MADE is dedicated to developing the basic tools. To this end, ARPA is funding a number of AI researchers. ``We want to be able to capture knowledge in its abstract form and do design at a high level,'' explains Pradeep Khosla, program manager of ARPA's SISTO (Software and Intelligent Systems Technology Office). ``With today's tools, we do it at a low level--such as the mass has to be x. We can't design at a functional level, such as rotary motion,'' he explains. ``There's just no way to abstract attributes with the tools now available,'' continues Khosla. ``We are working to pu
t in place a set of tools that allow the computer to come to the level of the human being instead of the human stooping to the computer.'' Khosla also believes that capturing the reasoning that goes into designs and design decisions is essential to the MADE effort.
Some of the tools currently being developed with MADE funding include a solid-modeling tool that reasons about geometries; a low-level, factory-floor control system; an autonomous assembly system that will take CAD input and automatically generate the assembly plan that drives the factory floor; and an engineering design notebook. MADE is also funding the Knowledge Sharing effort, a research consortium that is developing ways to communicate among groups. This project is forging languages and protocols for heterogeneous environments, such as an interlingua to translate between different representational languages and shared reusable knowledge bases.
One Knowledge Sharing project, for example, is the How Things Work program at Stanford'
s Knowledge Systems Laboratory. Researchers are prototyping support tools for simulating and analyzing device behavior in all stages of design. The prototype lets you describe a device--not just its physical specifications and functionality but also the design rationale for why given choices were made. Models built using this tool can be manipulated and used downstream in manufacturing, troubleshooting, and redesign. A great deal of emphasis is being placed on making knowledge reusable--such as running simulations from the functional specifications and then storing away the results so that later in the life cycle someone can look at the simulation to see how the designer intended the system to work.
In addition to the new, advanced design tools, ARPA is interested in finding ways for its researchers to share their work, such as through the Internet's World Wide Web. All MADE participants are posting documents describing their projects, research papers, progress reports, demonstrations, address lists of
participating scientists, and actual prototype tools. For example, using a Web browser such as Mosaic, Lynx, or Cello, you can access from the Internet the following MADE URL (universal resource locator): http://elib.cme.nist.gov/made/made.html. Or, if you want to explore Stanford University's MADE-related activities access, you can use http://www-ksl.stanford.edu.
A number of MADE technologies are now being put to the test designing a heat seeker that sits in the nose-cone of a missile and tracks target aircraft. The six-month project, called MADEFAST, was scheduled to end in August of this year and is the culmination of the MADE's first phase. ``MADEFAST has two goals: first, to enable people to collaborate and, second, to show the capabilities of various MADE tools,'' says Khosla. A byproduct of MADEFAST is a legacy of life-cycle design services available on the Web.
The next phase of MADE will test whether these core technologies can be scaled up. Many of the largest corporations in the U.S
. have expressed interest in this next phase. Companies like AT&T, IBM, General Motors, and General Electric have indicated that they want to be on-board.
MADE in the U.S.A.
