SBIR Phase II: Ecosystem for Learning and Team Design

第二阶段项目影响了设计课程中工程设计的教学方式，并有助于在科学、技术和工程领域培养一支强大的劳动力队伍。生态系统是一种软件工具，可以根据需求自动验证设计，在过程的早期发现疏忽，但也可以促进工程判断和创造力，允许以较少的主观性评估设计，并促进团队成员之间的顺畅沟通。这不仅可以提高生产力、提高设计质量和缩短产品上市时间，还可以带来社会效益（更安全的产品、更低的灾难性事故风险和更具竞争力的设计组织）。目标市场包括（1）教授工程设计的教育机构，以及（2）努力确保符合设计规范的设计公司。 核心创新有三个方面。 首先，它包括一个电子设计评估引擎，正在开发到一个高度的复杂性。 其次，设计知识库的调查和开发集成。 第三，对设计内容和元数据进行整体（大数据）分析。该项目旨在开发一个创新的设计决策（学习）支持系统，解决与设计疏忽的高成本有关的问题。这种疏忽可能导致灾难性的故障，产品召回，或者仅仅是预算或进度超支（由于返工）。 生态系统提供了一个灵活的、系统的和通用的框架，用于指导设计师完成设计过程，并根据产品设计规范（PDS）自动评估设计过程中每个阶段的设计活动。生态系统的核心是电子设计评估引擎，它分解PDS，将设计活动与个人需求相关联，并在设计疏忽的情况下提供实时的评估。评估引擎自动配置流行的工程设计开发工具，确定相关的分析，并解释输出。生态系统与这些开发工具交互，但不会取代它们。该生态系统可以将定性的客户需求转化为可靠的工程需求，并通过与行业数据库的无缝接口验证所提供的设计内容的相关性。生态系统通过自动化许多管理任务（例如，项目报告的生成）。尽管自动化，学习经验并没有减少。生态系统提示、捕获和保存相关工程决策的基本原理。它还支持工程设计的认证，通用学习目标。

This Phase II project impacts the way engineering design is taught in design courses and contributes to the training of a strong workforce in areas related to science, technology and engineering. The Ecosystem is a software tool that automatically verifies designs against the requirements, to uncover oversights early in the process, but also fosters engineering judgement and creativity, allows for assessment of designs with less subjectivity, and facilitates smooth communication among team members. This results in productivity enhancements, higher quality designs and shorter time-to-market, but also in societal benefits (safer products, less risk of catastrophic accidents and more competitive design organizations). The target market consists of (1) educational institutions teaching engineering design, and (2) design companies striving to ensure compliance with the design specifications. The core innovation is three-fold. First, it consists of an e-design assessment engine that is being developed to a high degree of sophistication. Second, design repositories are investigated and developed for integration. Third, holistic (big data) analysis of design content and metadata is implemented. The project seeks to develop an innovative design decision (learning) support system addressing problems related to the high cost of design oversights. Such oversights can result in catastrophic failures, product recalls, or simply in budget or schedule over-runs (due to rework). The Ecosystem offers a flexible, yet systematic and generic, framework, for guiding designers through the design process, and for automatically assessing design activities, from each stage in the design process, against the product design specification (PDS). At the center of the Ecosystem is the e-design assessment engine, which decomposes the PDS, correlates the design activities against individual requirements, and provides real-time advisories in case of design oversights. The assessment engine automatically configures popular development tools for engineering design, determines relevant analyses, and interprets the outputs. The Ecosystem interfaces with these development tools, but does not replace. The Ecosystem can translate qualitative customer requirements into solid engineering requirements, and verify the relevance of the design content provided through seamless interfaces with industry databases. The Ecosystem improves designers' productivity through automation of many administrative tasks (e.g., generation of project reports). Despite the automation, the learning experience is not diminished. The Ecosystem prompts for, captures, and preserves the rationale for relevant engineering decisions. It also supports accredited, generic learning objectives for engineering design.