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Copyright of Revista 180 is the property of Revista 180 and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The continuous integration and verification of components is essential in distributed design processes. Identifying the optimal integration and verification frequency, however, can be challenging due to the complexity of product development. Especially the effect of human decision-making in partially isolated development scenarios is difficult to consider. Thus, we performed an experimental study based on the following three steps: first, an extension of the existing parameter design framework, which is used to conduct experiments under laboratory conditions, in which human subjects solve quantitative surrogate design tasks. Second, a series of experiments in which 32 subjects divided into groups of two solved 229 parameter design tasks with a varying integration and verification frequency. And, third, a statistical analysis of the results with respect to development time, coupling strength and process costs. According to our results, development time can be reduced by up to 71%, if the integration and verification frequency is doubled. If process costs are also considered, the optimal frequency can be subject to a conflict of goals between reducing development time and minimising process cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the collaborative journey of the SmithVent team, a 30-person distributed group of volunteers, who designed, fabricated, and tested a simplified and cost-efficient ventilator over a three-month period, and won the CoVent-19 Challenge in July 2020. The paper first presents the SmithVent experience through a co-constructed narrative that describes the team's approaches to collaborative distributed design and fabrication. The paper next reviews frameworks from five theoretical lenses and then details the process of extracting, synthesizing, and organizing relevant factors to create a new and emergent framework reflective of the SmithVent experience. Lastly, the paper discusses educational implications of the SmithVent experience and proposed framework, emphasizing that the team's strategies provide a model for educational and industry settings for future collaborative and distributed design and fabrication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continuous integration and verification of components is essential in distributed design processes. Identifying the optimal integration and verification frequency, however, can be challenging due to the complexity of product development. Especially the effect of human decision-making in partially isolated development scenarios is difficult to consider. Thus, we performed an experimental study based on the following three steps: first, an extension of the existing parameter design framework, which is used to conduct experiments under laboratory conditions, in which human subjects solve quantitative surrogate design tasks. Second, a series of experiments in which 32 subjects divided into groups of two solved 229 parameter design tasks with a varying integration and verification frequency. And, third, a statistical analysis of the results with respect to development time, coupling strength and process costs. According to our results, development time can be reduced by up to 71%, if the integration and verification frequency is doubled. If process costs are also considered, the optimal frequency can be subject to a conflict of goals between reducing development time and minimising process cost.

In this article, the issue of distributed sensor fault estimation with resilient property is studied for a class of multi‐agent systems. Based on the relative output information, a novel fault estimation design is presented to estimate sensor fault and state vectors simultaneously. Meanwhile, the variation of observer gain is considered to improve the robustness of fault estimation observer. Furthermore, robust l2−l∞ performance is used to suppress the influence of external interference on sensor fault estimation error. Finally, simulations are provided to present effectiveness of the developed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the model of Master’s Degree Program in Product Design Engineering implemented for training engineers majoring in “Innovation shipbuilding”. The program is being rolled out as a pilot project since 2017 on the basis of the Institute of National Technological Initiative of Sevastopol State University. The ideology of Master’s programs in Product Design Engineering generally matches with the paradigm of context education, nevertheless it has its own specific features, such as the principle of diploma project readiness (as a product of Master’s program) to enter into the market, and the evaluation of the product by expert community; training of the graduates to professional activity as ‘chief designer managers’, who understand the principles of how to organize the team of specialists and to obtain the required result as a market product; simulation by the students of the role of a customer for the object of designing, and preparation of the future engineer taking into account not only object designing, but also future utilization, that is, the whole life cycle. Special attention is paid to so called “distributed design”, which enables to organize a virtual professional environment of a “design bureau” bringing together different student project groups.

Tracking of dynamic objects is a key element especially for in-door logistic solutions but also for e.g. manufacturing plants and warehouses. This paper is dealing with a tracking approach which is based on multiple cameras that are permanently mounted on the ceiling. In comparison to currently applied methods of detecting and tracking dynamic objects in the field of AGVs this approach is innovative. This is due to the shift in the capture of tracking data to ceiling cameras exclusively, for the reason of gaining a holistic overview of the complete tracking area. The application case discussed in this paper is for AGVs in the frame of a research project. However, this approach can be applied for different use cases which require a pursuit and tracking of dynamic objects that is based on multiple cameras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines learners' perceptions of an approach for improving Chinese-as-a-Foreign-Language learners' language proficiency, especially their speaking ability. Built upon the Distributed Design Model, a wiki-enhanced, Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) approach was designed at the syllabus level, taking into consideration various learning contexts. The approach was implemented and evaluated. Findings show that the overall design of this approach and most of the different components of the pre-task, core-task (interviews with native speakers, wiki-writing, and in-class presentations), and post-task activities were very positively perceived by the students. All students liked this design and enjoyed the class. The main reasons include (1) Students valued the opportunity to interact with native speakers outside the classroom; (2) The in-class presentations gave them an opportunity to express their personalities; (3) They liked the fact that the wiki-essay writing was connected to the in-class presentation because this helped them prepare the content of their presentation, also enabled them to develop writing and speaking on a single topic so they could become more advanced in that topic; (4) They also liked the consistency in organization and the eight units being procedurally similar. The learners held varying views on a few components of the pre-task and post-task activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper, we develop a distributed design method for power system stabilizers (PSSs) that improve damping performance for deflections caused by contingencies in a power grid in which large-scale PV penetration is introduced. We suppose that there are multiple independent system operators in a grid and each system operator designs a PSS based on the corresponding subsystem model information alone. The controller design method for PSSs under the restriction on available model information is called distributed design. Although practical distributed design methods are typically based on single-machine infinite-bus system, the problem here is that the designed controller possibly destabilizes the grid. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed design method for power grids based on retrofit control theory. The designed PSS can theoretically guarantee the stability of power grids and also improves damping performance. Through a numerical example for the IEEJ EAST 30-machine power system, the effectiveness of our proposed method is verified compared with the conventional method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Mine Automation is the property of Industry & Mine Automation Editorial Department and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Do-It-Yourself (DIY) fabrication is the practice where the end user creates a product for personal use rather than commercial production. This paper reviews how DIY practitioners can produce useful artefacts with limited resources. Fabrication principles were extracted from the DIY design repository Instructables.com. A set of candidate principles was iteratively refined and converged to five unique principles. Case studies are presented that illustrate approaches for implementing each. A first empirical study verifies the repeatability of the principle classification through crowd-sourced assessment. A hypothesis is that the principles seen in DIY fabrication can support design prototyping. This is validated through an empirical study that shows a positive correlation between exposure to the principles and enhanced design outcome. Highlights • Do-It-Yourself (DIY) design lowers the entry barrier to innovation. • Five DIY fabrication principles were extracted from the repository Instructables.com. • Occurrence of these principles in the database was validated with several mechanisms. • Ten case studies are presented in detail to elaborate the principles. • Study results show positive correlation with principles and enhanced design outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a retrofit control method for stable network systems. The proposed approach is a control method that, rather than an entire system model, requires a model of the subsystem of interest for controller design. To design the retrofit controller, we use a novel approach based on hierarchical state-space expansion that generates a higher-dimensional cascade realization of a given network system. The upstream dynamics of the cascade realization corresponds to an isolated model of the subsystem of interest, which is stabilized by a local controller. The downstream dynamics can be seen as a dynamical model representing the propagation of interference signals among subsystems, the stability of which is equivalent to that of the original system. This cascade structure enables a systematic analysis of both the stability and control performance of the resultant closed-loop system. The resultant retrofit controller is formed as a cascade interconnection of the local controller and an output rectifier that rectifies an output signal of the subsystem of interest so as to conform to an output signal of the isolated subsystem model while acquiring complementary signals neglected in the local controller design, such as interconnection signals from neighboring subsystems. Finally, the efficiency of the retrofit control method is demonstrated through numerical examples of power systems control and vehicle platoon control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agronomists aim to design or co-design agricultural systems that help farmers better meet the challenges of sustainability. In that aim, they need to adapt the way they design to respond to farm diversity, and to deal with knowledge gaps and uncertainty. This study sets out to improve understanding of design reasoning in agronomy. Our assumption is that tracking different reasoning patterns to their roots will shed light on conditions of their development and provide a better understanding of how new agronomic approaches emerge. To do so, we coupled a genealogical approach with a characterization of design regimes. Our work is based on a body of published work by French agronomists from the 18th century to the 21th, selected for their design-oriented nature. Applying an analytical framework built on design theory, we characterized five archetypical design regimes that emerged in connection with developments in the organization of agricultural R&D and shifts in agronomy's epistemological trends. For each one, we described an archetype of agronomists' reasoning, as well as the organizational model and performance logics that conditioned its development. Our results show first that the chains of cognitive operations that make up the agronomists' reasoning are different in each regime, as for example the way agronomists define the design issue and how they explore innovative concepts. Second, our analysis shows that each reasoning pattern generates a specific kind of output which offer farmers different action capabilities: for example, action rules that farmers simply apply, or design support tools to help farmers design techniques themselves. Comparing the design regimes, we identified four factors that influenced agronomists' design explorations: (i) their representations of agriculture, (ii) the scientific tools they use, (iii) their interactions with farmers, and (iv) their links with other scientific disciplines. We finally discuss the contribution of design science to better understanding of the diversity of design reasoning patterns in agronomy and we bring to light some avenues for future research with a view to enriching agronomists' “design toolbox” and supporting co-design in agriculture. We expect this work to offer a useful perspective to agronomists starting a design oriented work to support the evolution of practices on farm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual mobility and communication over ubiquitous ICT channels is already having a significant share in modern business and industrial activities. Collaboration in dislocated, virtual teams, where team members have never met in person are common, daily-based activities in every larger international corporation. Due to number of various reasons, this is still not a common practice in traditional academic institutions. Large majority of subjects are still taught ex-cathedra as they were decades and centuries ago. While there is still important value in this conservative approach, it is nonetheless important to give students an experience and knowledge necessary for kick-start their careers. In this paper we present an approach for virtual collaboration and mobility in order to facilitate modern dislocated new product development process and demonstrate its value on two cases of industrial projects, which were realised by international and multidisciplinary teams of students from four different European universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an empirical study of a collective design platform (Thingiverse); with the aim of understanding the phenomenon and investigating how designs concurrently evolve through the large and complex network of designers. The case study is based on the meta-data collected from 158 489 designs and 247 768 users; and it reveals that (i) Designs can be shared and quickly evolved into other designs through a distributed network of designers, (ii) only a small portion of the users are designers and (iv) collective design has deep and strong evolutionary roots. Better understanding of collective design platforms can help design practitioners to identify lead users in their respective domains and to discover latent needs that stem from different sub-communities or geographic regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The energy supply for sensors in wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSANs) is usually limited, we therefore focus on how to design the adjacency weights for achieving second-order consensus with less communication energy consumption in a distributed way, and investigate this issue from both the viewpoints of the rate of convergence and the sparsity of the network. We also derived the conditions on the consensus control parameter and the updating period for the proposed consensus protocol to ensure the convergence. It is shown that, by removing some properly chosen links, the sparsity of the resulting network can produce a positive effect on the energy efficiency of WSANs. Finally, simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed teams are an increasingly common feature of engineering design work. One key factor in the success of these teams is the development of short- and longer-term shared understanding. A lack of shared understanding has been recognized as a significant challenge, particularly in the context of globally distributed engineering activities. A major antecedent for shared understanding is question asking and feedback. Building on question-asking theory this work uses a quasi-experimental study to test the impact of questioning support on homogeneous and heterogeneous teams. The results show significant improvement in shared understanding for both team types (27% improvement for heterogeneous and 16% for homogeneous), as well as substantial differences in how this improvement is perceived. This extends theoretical insight on the development of shared understanding and contributes one of few empirical studies directly comparing homogeneous and heterogeneous teams in the engineering design context. This has implications for how distributed teams can be more effectively supported in practice, as well as how shared understanding can be facilitated in engineering design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are the complex systems that control and coordinate physical infrastructures, which may be geographically apart, via the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). One such application of CPS is smart microgrids. Microgrids comprise both power consuming and power producing infrastructure and are capable of operating in grid connected and disconnected modes. Due to the presence of heterogeneous smart devices communicating over multiple communication protocols in a distributed environment, a system architecture is required. The objective of this paper is to approach the microgrid architecture from the software and systems’ design perspective. The architecture should be flexible to support various multiple communication protocols and is able to integrate various hardware technologies. It should also be modular and scalable to support various functionalities such as island mode operations, energy efficient operations, energy trading, predictive maintenance, etc. These requirements are the basis for designing the software architecture for the smart microgrids that should be able to manage not only electrical but all energy related systems. In this work, we propose a distributed, hybrid control architecture suited for microgrid environments, where entities are geographically distant and need to operate in a cohesive manner. The proposed system architecture supports various design philosophies such as component-based design, hierarchical composition of components, peer-to-peer design, distributed decision-making and controlling as well as plug-and-play during runtime. A unique capability of the proposed system architecture is the self-similarity of the components for the distributed microgrids. The benefit of the approach is that it supports these design philosophies at all the levels in the hierarchy in contrast to a typical centralized architectures where decisions are taken only at the global level. The proposed architecture is applied to a real system of 13 residential buildings in a low-voltage distribution network. The required implementation and deployment details for monitoring and controlling 13 residential buildings are also discussed in this work.

This study extends our understanding of multimodal communication during design sketching. Building on the literature, the theoretical dimension frames gesturing as a communication channel and a thinking medium, and postulates an interplay between gesturing and other channels. The empirical dimension explores the theoretical propositions in the context of co-located and distributed sketching. Quantitative analyses suggest that when gesturing is restricted, graphical communication is leveraged to compensate, and that verbal communication is incessant in both collaboration environments. They also highlight a non-compensatory design phase dependent interaction between gestural and graphical communication. Moreover, they reveal differences in the communication structure used in the two environments. Qualitative analyses identify a behavior termed "cross-gesturing," which informs how gesturing facilitates shared understanding during collaborative sketching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the design of complex systems, a design process may be subjected to stochastic disruptions, interruptions, and changes, which can be described broadly as “design impulses.” These impulses can have a significant impact on the transient response and converged equilibrium for the design system. We distinguish this research by focusing on the interactions between local and architectural impulses in the form of designer mistakes and dissolution, division, and combination impulses, respectively, for a distributed design case study. We provide statistical support for the “parallel character hypothesis,” which asserts that parallel arrangements generally best mitigate dissolution and division impulses. We find that local impulses tend to slow convergence, but systems also subjected to dissolution or division impulses still favor parallel arrangements. We statistically uphold the conclusion that the strategy to mitigate combination impulses is unaffected by the presence of local impulses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The resolution of complex design problems requires a distributed design system that considers the involvement of various designers. Inconsistencies of design objectives and working procedures of distributed subsystems can cause design conflicts due to couplings among their subproblems. Another issue is the management of imprecision in design systems caused by the lack of knowledge about the final decision. In this paper, we define a conflict management model using the concept of set-based design to overcome these issues. We utilize constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) techniques and model agent attitudes to detect and justify design conflicts of heterogeneous design agents. A novel cooperative CSP is defined for resolving design conflicts through compromising constraint restriction. The conflict resolution system can be adopted with different strategies which take into account the solidarity architecture of design agents. The gains and costs of centralized, decentralized and controlled conflict resolution system strategies are simulated with the Monte Carlo method where design agent characters and their interactions reflect a stochastic nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed design in collaborative product development involves interorganizational teams of different disciplines, often geographically separated, that work jointly for the interest of an overall goal. The teams must agree on the product design without fully disclosing individual design information. Price-based negotiation is an effective design methodology under such circumstances. This work improves the negotiation mechanism based on the price schedules decomposition algorithm (PSDA), which only allows bi-level negotiation with a single design target, in two regards. The augmented price schedules decomposition algorithm (APSDA) is proposed to simultaneously consider multiple design targets in negotiation. Decision models and negotiation protocols are developed for complex design tasks decomposed in a hierarchy. The resultant APSDA-based negotiation mechanism enables multi-target hierarchical distributed design. A test scenario implemented with multiagent technologies validates the effectiveness of this mechanism. This study solves automating engineering collaborations with secure information sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In distributed design systems, while designers are connected to each other through dimensioning couplings, they have limited control over design and performance variables. Any inconsistency among design objectives and working procedures of heterogeneous designers interacting in the design system can result in design conflicts due to these couplings. Modeling design attitudes can help to understand inconsistencies and manage conflicts in design processes. We extend the conventional bottom-up or design supervision approach through agent-based attitude modeling techniques to a more powerful level. In our model, design agents can set requirements directly on their wellbeing values that represent how their design targets are likely to be met at a given moment of the design process. Some design conflicts can in this manner be prevented at an earlier phase of the design process. Set-based design and constraint programming techniques are used to explore the overall performance of stochastic design collaborations on a product modeled with uncertainties at a given moment of the design process. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to evaluate the performance of our set-based thinking approach, providing a variety of agent attitudes. The results show that the number of design conflicts occurring during the design process and the intensity of design conflicts are both reduced through our collaborative design platform. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Collaborative design is a common practice in modern product development. Companies specializing in different disciplines, which are often geographically separated, work together to develop solutions for the benefit of overall design. In such inter-organizational collaboration, participants hiding individual skills and design rationales is highly desirable. To fulfill this requirement, this study proposes a negotiation mechanism based on a price schedules decomposition algorithm originally developed in economics. The mechanism searches for globally optimal designs, where no participant is necessary to own full knowledge of the entire design space. This paper also applies multi-agent system technologies to realize a secure environment for automating distributed collaborative design. A test scenario of distributed tolerance allocation in assembly design validates the proposed mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an experimental study we investigated how collaboration settings for the synchronous versus asynchronous manipulation of a 2D-object influenced the quality of distributed design collaborations across three phases: problem description, idea generation, and decision making. We assessed collaboration quality in terms of process and outcomes, as well as user satisfaction and the perceived usefulness of the two settings for supporting distributed collaborations. We further investigated changes in the usage of the shared object across design phases. Our findings provided clear indications of phase-specific usage of the shared object in the synchronous setting. The two settings also showed varying usefulness depending on design stage indicating the disparate impact of synchronous and asynchronous settings on collaboration quality in disparate design phases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]