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Conceptualization and design of intellectualized, socialized, and personalized cyber-physical systems (CPSs) need integration of existing knowledge across the involved disciplines, as well as exploration and synthesis of novel knowledge beyond disciplinary boundaries. The latter needs a combined use of interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research. Supradisciplinary research has emerged as a new doctrine of combining these research approaches from epistemological, methodological, and procedural perspectives. However, no methodology can be found in the literature that could facilitate the practical execution of supradisciplinary research programs. This position paper proposes a conceptual framework that can be used as a blueprint for operationalization of such undertakings. The framework rests on six generic pillars: (i) problematics, (ii) infrastructure, (iii) method, (iv) stakeholders, (v) operations, and (vi) knowledge. It specifies the major concerns that have to be taken into consideration in a systematic manner in developing executional scenarios for supradisciplinary research. The framework facilitates (i) management of research organization tasks, (ii) joint formation of shared research infrastructure, (ii) setting up concrete research program, (iii) academic partnering and public stakeholder involvement, (iv) process flow management and capacity/competence allocation, (v) a holistic knowledge synthesis, assessment, and consolidation, and (vi) development of tools supporting the preparation and execution of large-scale supradisciplinary research. In its current form, it does not cover the specific societal and personal issues of a successful organization of the inquiry at individual researchers, research teams, and research community levels. A community-based follow-up research may focus on the practical application and testing of the framework in concrete cases—a task that an individual researcher cannot address.

There are many real-life processes whose smart control requires processing context information. Though processing time-varied context information is addressed in the literature, domain-independent solutions for reasoning about time-varying process scenarios are scarce. This paper proposes a method for dynamic context computation concerning spatial and attributive information. Context is interpreted as a body of information dynamically created by a pattern of entities and relationships over a history of situations. Time is conceived as a causative force capable of changing situations and acting on people and objects. The invariant and variant spatial information is captured by a two-dimensional spatial feature representation matrix (SFR-matrix). The time-dependent changes in the context information are computed based on a dynamic context information (DCI) management hyper-matrix. This humble but powerful representation lends itself to a quasi-real time computing and is able to provide information about foreseeable happenings over multiple situations. Based on this, the reasoning mechanism proposed in this paper is able to provide informative instructions for users who needed to be informed in a dynamically changing situation. This paper uses the practical case of evacuation of a building in fire both as an explorative case for conceptualization of the functionality of the computational mechanism and as a demonstrative and testing application. Our intention is to use the dynamic context computation mechanism as a kernel component of a reasoning platform for informing cyber-physical systems (I-CPSs). Our future research will address the issue of context information management for multiple interrelated spaces.

This paper summarizes the results of an empirical study concerning the use of hand motions as one of the input mechanisms of a multi-modal interface of computer aided conceptual design systems for initial shape design of consumer durables. A hand motion language (HML) has been developed and used in designed experiments to describe simple, compound and hybrid shapes. The subjects were asked to reconstruct the presented shapes by sketching on paper. Comprehension of the hand motion language has been evaluated in terms of fidelity and efficiency. The results clearly indicate the potentials of a HML in shape conceptualization. In addition, the experiments revealed several new issues related to the application of the hand motion language in a multi-modal interface.

This paper introduces the idea of extending quality assurance efforts in the processes of development of computer aided design (CAD) software systems to include formal review or testing of underlying engineering principles, theories, methods, or physical phenomena. It stems from the principle of disembodiment of CAD software systems and incorporates elements of existing well-established methodologies such as participatory design, extreme programming, and spiral software development. Under this approach, ideas’ generation, theories’ selection or creation, methods’ development, algorithms’ design, and pilot prototype implementation are the intermediate tasks in the early stages of the process of development of CAD software. Theories, methods, algorithms, and pilot prototypes are the deliverables of these tasks. Each task involves stepwise translation of requirements into a respective deliverable. Application experiences have shown that this procedure enlarges the scope of requirements’ acquisition and quality assurance of CAD software.