A-DESIGN - AGENT BASED ADAPTIVE CONCEPTUAL DESIGN
INTRODUCTION
A-Design is a new design generation method builds on innovations from artificial life, stochastic optimization, multi-objective optimization, qualitative physics, asynchronous teams, and human cognition.
The current focus of A-Design is on electro-mechanical conceptual design. The implemented system differs from previous work in that:
- designs are not only generated but iteratively improved upon to meet objectives specified by a designer
- synthesis of designs is performed within a rich descriptive representation of components and configurations that models real-world component interactions
- key design alternatives are retained to allow the system the flexibility to adjust to changes in the problem description made by the designer throughout the design process.
The best way to understand A-Design is to examine the four basic subsystems of the process:
- the multi-agent system of creating design alternatives
- the functional representations for electro-mechanical designs
- the multi-objective design selection method
- and the iterative search process