SHARE: A Scalable Framework and Methodology for Concurrent Engineering

Table of Contents:

  1. Principal Investigator.
  2. Productivity Measures.
  3. Summary of Objectives and Approach.
  4. Detailed Summary of Technical Progress.
  5. Transitions and DOD Interactions.
  6. Software and Hardware Prototypes.
  7. List of Publications.
  8. Invited and Contributed Presentations.
  9. Honors, Prizes or Awards Received.
  10. Project personnel promotions obtained.
  11. Project Staff.
  12. Multimedia URL.
  13. Keywords.
  14. Business Office.
  15. Expenditures.
  16. Students.
  17. Book Plans.
  18. Sabbatical Plans.
  19. Related Research.
  20. History.

Principal Investigator.

Productivity Measures.

Summary of Objectives and Approach.

The objective of this work is to help teams of engineers achieve a shared understanding of their designs and design processes, using agent-based computational tools and services for communication, collaboration, analysis, and synthesis.

    The approach is based on developing:
  1. design representations that encompass decisions and rationale linked to the design artifact
  2. A distributed architecture that enables agents (human and computational) to communicate and cooperate in solving engineering problems
  3. Incremental, interactive concurrent engineering tools for analysis and synthesis
As the SHARE tools and environment are developed, they are tested on industry-sponsored design projects. Their impact on the design process is analyzed to assess their effectiveness and provide a basis for models of concurrent design and redesign processes.

Detailed Summary of Technical Progress.

  1. A mature edition of the SHARE environment, including the PENS electronic notebook has continued to be tested. engineering design teams in ME210. The SHARE environment was used by all ME210 teams. This year, all teams have remote participants, three of them are international: one in Spain, one in the Netherlands, and one in Sweden. Supporting files for each project were captured on laptop computers and published on CDROMs and the World Wide Web, and analyzed to study design processes and design re-use. Exercising SHARE in real design activity continues to guide development of the next generation environment.
  2. The SHARE Next-Link work on agent-based software for design collaboration has been largely concluded. We continue to maintain the demonstration of several CAD-based agents working over the Internet to design a missle cable harness. We also built a web-based simple demostration of Redux - planning a trip. This work has led to a complete redesign of the agent protocols and the addition of several new generic agents in a new project called ProcessLink. A major result has been the prototype of a Constraint Manager agent.
  3. SHARE continues to collaborate with Sandia National Laboratories to develop an agile, Internet-based service for design and manufacturing on the Sandia Intelligent Agents for Manufacturing project,of which the CDR SIAM project is part. Demonstration agents using JAVA(tm) have been constructed. We continue to develop the JAT, now at version 0.4. The JAT has been used and experimented with by researchers all over the world.

Transitions and DOD Interactions.

  1. 17 different industrial groups (FMC, Hughes, Peterbuilt, Schick, Baxter, Stanford Children's Hospital, Stanford Medical School, NASA, Nikon, GM, DEC, Western Digital, 3M, CapSnap, Western Sky, AT&T, DVI, Boeing) participated in the SHARE ME210 testbed environment. 3M, NASA and Hughes corresponded regularly with design teams via SHARE. Electronic documents were delivered to industrial sponsors for redesign and published as a design library on the World Wide Web.
  2. SHARE is working with SIMA on finding applications of Next-Link technology. This work has continued under a new SIMA project: Four-dimensional Production Models for Factory Conversion Projects".

Software and Hardware Prototypes.

  1. Prototype Name: PENS (Personal Electronic Notebook with Sharing)

List of Publications.

  1. C. Petrie, " Agent-Based Engineering, the Web, and Intelligence", IEEE Expert, 11:6, pp. 24-29, December, 1996.
  2. C. Petrie, H. Jeon, and M. Cutkosky, " Combining Constraint Propagation and Backtracking for Distributed Engineering," Working Notes of the ECAI-96 Workshop on Non-Standard Constraint Processing, 1996.
  3. S. Goldmann, " Procura: A Project Management Model
    of Concurrent Planning and Design    ", WET-ICE 96 Best Paper Award.
  4. H.R. Frost and M.R. Cutkosky, "Design for Manufacturability via Agent Interaction," Paper No. 96-DETC/DFM-1302, Proceedings of the 1996 ASME Computers in Engineering Conference, Irvine, CA, August 18-22, 1996, pp. 1-8.
  5. M.R. Cutkosky, J. Glicksman and J.M. Tenenbaum, "MadeFast: Collaborative Engineering Over the Internet", Communications of the ACM, 39:9, 1996, pp. 78-87.
  6. G. R. Olsen, M.R. Cutkosky and J. M. Tenenbaum and T. R. Gruber, "Collaborative Engineering Based on Knowledge Sharing Agreements," Concurrent Engineering Research and Applications, 3: 2, 1995, pp. 145-159.
  7. C. Petrie, T. Webster, and M. Cutkosky," Using Pareto Optimality to Coordinate Distributed Agents," Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing (AIEDAM), 9, 269-281, 1995. Abstract available
  8. J. Hong, G. Toye, and L. Leifer, "Personal Electronic Notebook with Sharing," Proc. 4th WET ICE, pp. 88-94, April, 1995, West Virginia, IEEE Press.
  9. G.Toye, M.Cutkosky, L.J.Leifer, J.M.Tenenbaum and J. Glicksman, "SHARE: A Methodology and Environment for Collaborative Product Development," in Int. J. of Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems, 1994. Abstract available
  10. H.Park, M.Cutkosky, A.B.Conru and S-H. Lee, "An Agent-Based Approach to Concurrent Cable Harness Design," Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, Vol. 8, 1994, pp. 45-61. Abstract available
  11. C.Petrie, M.Cutkosky and H.Park, "Design Space Navigation," Proceedings of Third Int. Conf. on AI in Design, August 1994, Lausanne, Switzerland. Abstract available
  12. G.Olsen, M.Cutkosky and J.M.Tenenbaum and T.R.Gruber, "Collaborative Engineering based on Knowledge Sharing Agreements," to be presented at the 1994 ASME Engineering Database Symposium. Abstract available
  13. S. Kambhampati, M. R. Cutkosky, J. M. Tenenbaum and S-H Lee, "Integrating General Purpose Planners and Specialized Reasoners: Case Study of a Hybrid Planning Architecture," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics,, Vol. 23, No. 6, November/December, 1993, pp. 1503-1518. Abstract available
  14. A.Conru and M.Cutkosky, "Computational Support for Interactive Cable Harness Routing and Design," Advances in Design Automation, DE-Vol 65-1, Proceedings of the 1993 ASME Design Automation Conf., Albuquerque, NM., Sept 19-22, 1993, pp. 551-558. Abstract available
  15. V.Kumar, J.Glicksman, G.A.Kramer, "A SHAREd Web To Support Design Teams," Proceedings of IEEE Third Workshop on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises, April 17-19, 1994, Morgantown, WV. Abstract available
  16. Baudin, Catherine; Kedar, Smadar; Underwood, Jody G.; Baya, Vinod; "Question-based Acquisition of Conceptual Indices for Multimedia Design Documentation" , In proceedings of the 11th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence AAAI-93, Washington D.C., pp 452-458, July 1993.
  17. Baudin, Catherine; Underwood, Jody G.; Baya, Vinod; "Using Device Models to Facilitate the Retrieval of Multimedia Design Information" , In proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Chambery, France, pp 1237-1243, August 29-September 2,1993.

Invited and Contributed Presentations.

  1. ISAT Demonstration: An invited presentation of the MadeFast project was given by on August 26, 1994 by M. Cutkosky and G. Toye at the ARPA meeting in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
  2. At the ARPA MADE Program Workshop in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Thursday, November 10th, (PowerPoint slides available) the MADEFAST seeker was publicly demonstrated to work.
  3. PowerPoint slides were furnished to Pradeep Khosla in June, 1994, for the annual ARPA MADE briefing.
  4. MADEFAST and Agent-Based Engineering (ABE) were presented at the July, 1995 ARPA MADE PI meeting, hosted by the Stanford Center For Design Research. Slides are available.
  5. Mark Cutkosky presented MADEFAST at the ARPA SISTO symposium (STISS) in August, 1995.
  6. Using the WWW for a Team-Based Engineering Design Class: A presentation was given by Jack Hong, George Toye, and Larry Leifer as part of the CS547 Human-Computer Interaction Seminar on September 29, 1995.
  7. The Next-Link project was the subject of the keynote address given by Charles Petrie at the German Conference on Knowledge-based Systems XPS-95 in March, 1995.
  8. "An Experiment in Coordination of Distributed Agents" was a talk given by Charles Petrie in August and September of 1994 at the following sites:
  9. "The Next-Link Project": talk given by Charles Petrie at the Informs Conference, Los Angeles, May, 1995.
  10. "Agent-Based Engineering": talk given by Charles Petrie at the OOPSLA Workshop on Objects, Scripts and the Web in Austin, Texas, October, 1995.
  11. Formalizing Distributed Concurrent Engineering by Charles Petrie was the invited keynote at AAAI SIGMAN'96.
  12. "Agent-Based Concurrent Design" was an invited presentation given by Mark Cutkosly at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, April 24, 1995.
  13. "Agent-Based Engineering" by Mark Cutkosky was the keynote presentation and paper at Concurrent Engineering '96, University of Toronoto, Toronoto, CA., August 22, 1996.

Honors, Prizes or Awards Received.

Project Personnel Promotions Obtained.

Project Staff.

  1. Name:Dr. Larry Leifer
  2. Name:Dr. Mark Cutkosky
  3. Name:Dr. Charles Petrie
  4. Name:Dr. George Toye

Multimedia URL.

  1. EOYL FY95
  2. QUAD FY95
  3. EOYL FY94
  4. All CDR SHARE projects are on the WWW.
  5. A viedo of the MADEFAST project is available.
  6. Video tapes of all ME210 presentations have been made. In addition, CD-ROMs containing all ME210 design documentation are now available.
  7. The WWW Mechanical Engineering Virtual Library is maintained by the CDR and references the SHARE projects.
  8. The Sandia Intelligent Agents for Manufacturing (SIAM) project pages reference the CDR SHARE-based work.
  9. The SHARE Next-Link project is referenced by many other sites such as the UMass DIS Laboratory, Ralph Becket's Intelligent Software Agents page, the Webography of AI in Design resource, and the Multi-Agent Systems Webliography.
  10. Most of the CDR SHARE technical reports. are available on-line.

Keywords.

  1. ABSML
  2. ACaPS
  3. DEDAL
  4. First-Link
  5. GCDK
  6. ICM
  7. ISAT
  8. MADE
  9. MADEFAST
  10. ME210
  11. MediaKit
  12. Mmphone
  13. Next-Link
  14. REDUX
  15. SHADE
  16. SHARE
  17. StoryBoard

Business Office

Expenditures

  1. Est. FY96: None
  2. FY95: 61%
  3. FY94: 100%
  4. FY93: 100%

Students

  1. Name: Mr. Heecheol Jeon
  2. Name: Mr. Jack Hong
  3. Name: Mr. Brian Luehrs

Book Plans

Sabbatical Plans

Related Research

  1. Next-Link related research covers most of the agent-based SHARE-related work.
  2. The WWW Mechanical Engineering Virtual Library is managed with SHARE funding.
  3. The DesignNet resouce is also managed with SHARE funding.

History

Note: the SHARE project has concluded and the the follow-on project is Design Space Colonization.