Agent-Based Engineering Design Systems

This chapter describes five significant projects in some detail, giving information about project name, research group, application area, communication protocol, representation and implementation technologies, and main characteristics. Real world concurrent engineering design projects require the cooperation of multidisciplinary design teams using sophisticated and powerful engineering tools such as commercial computer-aided design tools, engineering database systems, and knowledge-based systems. Engineering design has been using some techniques from artificial intelligence for a number of years. Palo Alto Cooperative Testbed (PACT) was an infrastructure for concurrent engineering encompassing multiple sites, subsystems, and disciplines. In PACT, an agent is a program that encapsulates an engineering tool. E-mail serves as the primary medium for both human communication and tool integration. Engineers use e-mail routinely for discussions and information exchange. The interaction mechanisms for agents in First-Link were developed to meet the needs of human designers working on a collaborative project.