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This paper discusses important improvements in the efficient Critical Constraint Method (CCM) for the optimization of structural product families subjected to multiple crash load cases. The method was first presented by Öman and Nilsson (Struct Multidisc Optim 41(5):797–815, 2010). However, the algorithm often converged towards an infeasible solution, which considerably limited the applicability of the method. Therefore, improvements are presented here to make the method more robust regarding feasible solutions, resulting in only a minor decrease in efficiency compared to the original method. The improvements include; a penalty approach to control the feasibility of the method by continuously pushing the solution out of the infeasible region, a dynamic contraction algorithm to increase the accuracy and robustness of the method by considering the optimization progress and variable history in the reduction of the step size, and the implementation of a parallel approach to further increase the efficiency of the method by enabling the full potential of large-scale computer clusters. Finally, the potential of the improved CCM algorithm is demonstrated on a large-scale industrial family optimization problem and it is concluded that the high efficiency of the method enables the usage of large product family optimization in the design process.

Photoplethysmography (PPG) can be used to measure systolic blood pressure at the brachial artery. With a specially designed probe, positioned in the most distal position beneath a pressure cuff on the upper arm, this is possible. The distance between the light source (880 nm) and the photodetector was 20 mm. A test was performed on neuro-intensive care patients by determining blood pressure from the PPG curves, and, when it was compared with systolic blood pressure obtained from inserted indwelling arterial catheters, a correlation factor of r=0.95 was achieved. The difference between blood pressure obtained using PPG and invasive blood pressure measurement was 3.9±9.1 mmHg (mean±SD), n=19. The depth to the brachial artery was 13.9±4.1 mm (mean±SD), n=18. A digital PPG system utilising pulsating light was also developed.

It has become increasingly apparent that perception cannot be treated in isolation from the response generation, firstly because a very high degree of integration is required between different levels of percepts and corresponding response primitives. Secondly, it turns out that the response to be produced at a given instance is as much dependent upon the state of the system, as the percepts impinging upon the system. The state of the system is in consequence the combination of the responses produced and the percepts associated with these responses. Thirdly, it has become apparent that many classical aspects of perception, such as geometry, probably do not belong to the percept domain of a Vision system, but to the response domain. There are not yet solutions available to all of these problems. In consequence, this overview will focus on what are considered crucial problems for the future, rather than on the solutions available today. It will discuss hierarchical architectures for combination of percept and response primitives, and the concept of combined percept-response invariances as important structural elements for Vision. It will be maintained that learning is essential to obtain the necessary exibility and adaptivity. In consequence, it will be argued that invariances for the purpose of vision are not geometrical but derived from the percept-response interaction with the environment. The issue of information representation becomes extremely important in distributed structures of the types foreseen, where uncertainty of information has to be stated for update of models and associated data.

LiTH-ISY-R-1514