PROJECT SUMMARY FY 97 ACCOMPLISHMENTS FY 97 EVENTS TECHNOLOGY TRANSITION BROWSING SERVO SYSTEM
KNOWLEDGE BASE PROJECT GRAPHICS 
PROJECT SUMMARY FY 97 ACCOMPLISHMENTS FY 97 EVENTS TECHNOLOGY TRANSITION BROWSING SERVO SYSTEM
KNOWLEDGE BASE PROJECT GRAPHICS Active 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, knowledge base and database integration, digital library, information retrieval, electronic commerce, and electro-mechanical design. The project is just finishing its second year.
To facilitate searching and using complex catalog information of standard engineering components. The initial focus is on design processes in distributed, heterogeneous and network-based computing environments. The Active Catalogs information is active, dynamic, composable, multi-modal, multi-level, reuse-able, semantically search-able, interoperable and executable in distributed environments. Active Catalogs information will contain various data types including static data and simulation models. Engineers and designers can functionally search the information on the Net, seamlessly integrate the information into their work practices, and try their designs before placing orders of components. Active Catalogs will be tested in electro-mechanical design.
The issues of searching and incorporating complex information content into work practices are studied by building examples in focused domains. Last year, as a result of collaboration with Lockheed Martin on Simulation-Based Design of ships, we worked on the domain of pumps. This year, the domain of servo control components in the missile guidance systems is used to demonstrate Active Catalogs technology. The approach involves:
Construction of a rich ontology (taxonomy, terminology, and semantic net) of servo control systems to facilitate the semantic/functional search for the needed information and components in design.
Implementation of simulation models, such as transfer functions, kinematics and dynamics models, to represent active and complex multi-modal information of engineering components.
Building a database to provide active and multi-dimensional representations of electro-mechanical components.
Building a distributed, network-based and multi-modal access interface to complex information in Active Catalogs.
Implementation of a generic CAD environment to facilitate the incorporation of complex information into the work practices of engineering analysis and design.
July 1997
Developed a second domain ontology of servo control systems after releasing the first domain ontology of pumps last year. The ontology is built on top of the ontology editor, Ontosaurus and can be accessed via the Web at URL:http://abu.isi.edu:8000/loom/shuttle.html. The work identified issues in building domain ontologies to support the search for catalog components.
Implemented simulation models for the second domain, i.e. servo control components, such as motors, controllers etc. The work identified issues in the representation of complex information contents, such as behavior of components.
Developed a prototype protocol and system for a distributed simulation using Java and CORBA. The system demonstrated a capability of interoperating simulation models in a distributed environment using scalable middleware, e.g., CORBA and Java.
Providing Multi-Modal Representations of Complex Information Contents: Active Catalogs databases are being built for servo control components, such as DC servo motors and roller bearings etc. Multiple modalities, such as AutoCAD files, Mathlab Simulation models and VRML files are represented. The databases will provide catalog compoents for a multi-corporations team of gimbal design.
The approach in Active Catalogs to multi-modal and multi-level representations is similar in spirit to the approach of multi-valent documents in the UC Berkeley digital library project, but with more emphasis on physical behavior models of engineering parts. The comparison between the two approaches to multi-level representations of documents and engineering parts will be studied.
Providing Distributed and Multi-Modal Access to Complex Information: A Java-based interface is being built to provide multi-modalities of Active Catalog information. In addition, dynamic behavior modeling is used to select components based on behavioral requirement and dynamic performance data.
Incorporating Complex Information into Work Practices: A generic CAD tool will be built to incorporate simulation models written in Java Beans, a component-based technology based on Java. The models will interoperate with other CAD tools using Java wrappers and CORBA.
Full System Integration: Active Catalogs, with multiple modal information of servo control components, will be integrated with the Lockheed Martin's Interactive gimbal design system. The impact of Active Catalog to the work practices from early conceptual design to acquisition of parts and manufacture of systems, will be evaluated.
ISI's Active Catalog is part of a multi-disciplinary design team of gimbal and navigation guidance system, led by Lockheed Martin. The team includes Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Rockwell, Raytheon, Texas Instrument, Stanford Research Institute, Industrial Technology Institute, Arizona State University and ISI. Specifically, Active Catalogs will provide Internet and network-based access to multi-modal catalog information of servo control components to gimbal system designers. The impact of Active Catalogs to designers in terms of the speedup in finding components and in designing gimbal systems will be evaluated. The Active Catalogs Web interface is expected to be ready by the end of August 1997, and its system interface by the end of February 1998.
Active Catalogs contributed to a multi-university winning proposal of VLSI design funded by DARPA. Due to funding limitations, our current involvement is participation in meetings only.
