PROJECT SUMMARY FY 96 ACCOMPLISHMENTS FY 97 EVENTS TECHNOLOGY TRANSITION BROWSING PUMP
SYSTEM KNOWLEDGEBASE PROJECT GRAPHICS FY95 REPORT
PROJECT SUMMARY FY 96 ACCOMPLISHMENTS FY 97 EVENTS TECHNOLOGY TRANSITION BROWSING PUMP
SYSTEM KNOWLEDGEBASE PROJECT GRAPHICS FY95 REPORTActive Catalogs is a 3-year research project that will, by providing on-line catalogs augmented by behavioral models and their consumption environment, significantly enhance the engineering and design support that is desirable but beyond the reach of current engineering environments. It will realize a new "Try Before You Buy" paradigm in the electro-mechanical engineering domain, and will facilitate a wide range of activities from information discovery, to information evaluation, and to information consumption.
It is a synergy of a wide spectrum of research issues: knowledge representation, knowledgebase and database integration, digital library, information retrieval, electronic commerce, and electro-mechanical design. The project is just finishing its first year.
To facilitate engineering electro-mechanical design by providing a seamless flow of information discovery, information evaluation, and information consumption to the engineer. The environment will bring dynamic and behavioral information into the design environment as well as provide better functionally-oriented search via description. The engineer will find and pull down models and design fragments from the Net, incorporate them into a possibly distributed, simulation and try the systems before placing orders or committing to the manufacturing/acquisition phase.
To construct a rich ontology (taxonomy, terminology, and semantic net) of a subdomain within electro mechanical design. This ontology will be used by designers to specify their semantic/functional description of the needed information. Also, the ontology will be used by a discovery system during its searching for the information.
Implement a core set of behavioral models including transfer functions, kinematics and dynamics descriptions and a variety of modes of interactive simulations. These models and environments will enable the user to evaluate the design by interactively modifying parameters and observing changes in the system behavior.
Define and implement interfaces of the behavioral models that follows the standard set by Open Model Forum to allow integration of the models.
Implement viewers and simulators that facilitate examinations of various aspects of pieces of design subset or other information.
Implement a set of mediators to form the basis to integrate a collection of PC-based tools for engineering design and mathematical computation.
Integrate above components to realize a seamless information flow in an integrated engineering environment.
Active Catalogs: A Knowledge-Rich Design Library Facililtating Information Consumption
July 1996
The project is approaching the end of its first year. During the first year, we have built a core ontology for pump systems as may be used in ship design domain. The ontology, now available for browsing via the Web, will be integrated into an intelligent search engine (a separate effort at ISI supported by ARPA), potentially with some industrial databases, to facilitate engineers' design and maintenance tasks via knowledge-based search.
A simple prototype has been implemented to demonstrate the concept of using active information in a distributed simulation environment, consisting of WorkingModel and MatLab.
The distributed simulation enviornment distinguishes itself from other distributed computing environments in that the environment is configured (or constructed) at runtime instead of at the system design time. For example, after down loading a piece of pump system behavioral model, the Active Catalogs' runtime agent for WorkingModel will contact a service broker requesting for needed computing services, based on the types sub-components of the model. According to the request, the broker will check its database and reply to the agent information about hosts and their connectivities through which the agent can get the desired services. This information guides the agents to contact the hosts, dispatch the relevant portions of the model, set up the data exchange channel among the pieces of the model, and other chores necessary.
To satisfy the need of distributed computing enviornment required by Active Catalogs, we have prototyped a protocol and a simple mediator that together delivers the capability for Just-In-Need Service Contracting and Negotiation. This virtual computing environment capability offers efficient and reliable access to a larger set of services.
