复杂产品虚拟样机支撑平台的初步研究与开发

该文主要研究并介绍了复杂产品虚拟样机支撑平台研究项目取得的阶段研究成果，包括支撑平台体系结构及其关键技术等，尤其重点介绍了目前自行开发集成的，开放的，基于标准支持多领域复杂产品虚拟样机工程的支撑平台，并给了两个基于支撑平台的典型虚拟样机开发应用案例。初步实践表明复杂产品虚拟样机支撑平台可看作为下一代企业协同应用各领域CAx/DFx工具的有效手段。最后，对进一步研究工作进行了展望。     

航天产品性能样机建模与仿真综合集成平台

为了提高航天产品性能样机建模与仿真协同工作水平,针对性能样机全生命周期协同建模与仿真过程中管理系统综合集成性差的问题,构建基于云计算平台的性能样机综合集成协同建设与仿真平台。重点研究性能样机协同建模与仿真平台数据库建模与设计、复杂航天产品性能样机综合集成建模与仿真平台框架、性能样机协同建模与仿真平台基础框架、性能样机制造云服务平台架构和系统物理平台架构。应用结果表明,所构建的平台较好地解决了性能样机全生命周期统一建模与仿真以及不同人员、不同工具、不同算法、不同描述语言下的耦合建模、联合仿真问题。      

Research on group awareness of networked collaboration within the design team and between teams

Group awareness is the critical content of collaboration in a networked collaborative design team, and it is a meaningful way to study teamwork efficiency. However, existing methods that describe awareness information are not comprehensive. They all set an ideal collaborative environment of the single role and single activity, ignoring the bidirectional and overlapping of the collaboration process. To meet this gap, a novel group awareness method for the networked collaboration design team is proposed in this paper from the actual collaborative process. Firstly, the awareness information granularity in the joint work of the networked collaborative design team is described in detail, and the group awareness model is established. Then, the intra- and inter-team collaboration of networked collaborative design team is quantified, and correspondingly, combined with the degree of cooperation between members, a method for solving the group awareness ability of intra- and inter-team association by adopting awareness calculation is presented. Last, to illustrate the feasibility of the suggested approach, a vehicle interior collaborative design task is taken as an example. This study can provide practical guidance for a related design service platform to optimize team collaboration efficiency and select team members objectively and fairly.     

A distributed and interactive system to integrated design and simulation for collaborative product development

The goal of applying collaborative product development in industry has raised the need to develop software tools supporting system integration and group collaboration. Current methods and tools mainly focus on the collaborative creation of design components and assemblies. However, few of them support the collaborative work in developing simulation models so that proposed design concepts and solutions can be evaluated by integrating expertise from several disciplines. The purpose of this research is to develop a distributed and interactive system on which designers and experts can work together to create, integrate and run simulations for engineering design. To develop such a system, a number of issues, e.g. effectiveness and efficiency of modeling work, the re-use of models, interaction and cooperation, accuracy of simulation, collaborative operation on models, etc., need to be addressed. This paper describes an open architecture to developing simulations for engineering design in a distributed and collaborative environment, identifies a set of key issues raised in this architecture, and presents the techniques employed in our solution.     

The design and realization of CoViD: a system for collaborative virtual 3D design

Many important decisions in the design process are made during fairly early on, after designers have presented initial concepts. In many domains, these concepts are already realized as 3D digital models. Then, in a meeting, the stakeholders for the project get together and evaluate these potential solutions. Frequently, the participants in this meeting want to interactively modify the proposed 3D designs to explore the design space better. Today’s systems and tools do not support this, as computer systems typically support only a single user and computer-aided design tools require significant training. This paper presents the design of a new system to facilitate a collaborative 3D design process. First, we discuss a set of guidelines which have been introduced by others and that are relevant to collaborative 3D design systems. Then, we introduce the new system, which consists of two main parts. The first part is an easy-to-use conceptual 3D design tool that can be used productively even by naive users. The tool provides novel interaction techniques that support important properties of conceptual design. The user interface is non-obtrusive, easy-to-learn, and supports rapid creation and modification of 3D models. The second part is a novel infrastructure for collaborative work, which offers an interactive table and several large interactive displays in a semi-immersive setup. It is designed to support multiple users working together. This infrastructure also includes novel pointing devices that work both as a stylus and a remote pointing device. The combination of the (modified) design tool with the collaborative infrastructure forms a new platform for collaborative virtual 3D design. Then, we present an evaluation of the system against the guidelines for collaborative 3D design. Finally, we present results of a preliminary user study, which asked naive users to collaborate in a 3D design task on the new system.     

Utilizing knowledge context in virtual collaborative work

The understanding of knowledge can be impaired if it is isolated from the proper context. Despite the importance of contextual information, there has been limited support for utilizing context in current knowledge management and collaborative systems. This paper presents a knowledge context model, called KC-V, which facilitates the use of contextual information in virtual collaborative work. Four benefits of using KC-V are suggested: evolutionary accumulation of knowledge aligned with collaborative activities, supporting the virtual team lifecycle, improved understanding by rich navigation paths, and searching for knowledge with similar context. A web-based collaboration system called VWSS is developed using KC-V.     

Survey of collaborative drawing support tools

Along with recent experiments in the design of communication or computer tools for supporting various kinds of group working, the development ofcollaborative drawing systems has emerged as a notable research area within the field of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. This paper reports a survey of the experiments in collaborative drawing support tools with an objective of reviewing how the issues of supportingcollaborative design have been addressed by the research prototypes. The survey is presented in three parts: (1) findings from the observations of group interaction in drawing and design activities, (2) a framework for classifying the design issues experimented with by prototypes developers, and (3) a categorisation of the current prototype systems by interrelating the patterns of group use observed with the system features classified. The survey indicates that there are currently at least three different strategies of developing collaborative drawing support tools, which reflect the existence of diversified understanding and technological responses to what and how human collaboration in design may be supported.     

网格中基于角色的协同电子商务研究*

协同电子商务是电子商务发展的高级阶段,其内部和外部复杂的交互和协作要求有一个强大的网络平台作为支撑。网格就是一个拥有强大计算能力,能提供多种服务,支持各种交互,开放且能够处理异构和分布式资源的网络平台。将角色的概念引入协同电子商务可以增强其实用性和协同度,因此网格中基于角色的协同电子商务将大大提高协同电子商务中的集成和协作效率。     

System construction for comprehensive industrial ecosystem oriented networked collaborative manufacturing platform (NCMP) based on three chains

In industrial manufacturing, with the deep integration and development of advanced digital technologies such as industrial big data, industrial Internet and industrial artificial intelligence with manufacturing industry, the manufacturing model is gradually developing and evolving from the direction of networking, platform, integration, collaboration and ecology. Therefore, for industrial manufacturing process, the research of construction of comprehensive industrial ecosystem oriented Networked Collaborative Manufacturing Platform (NCMP) system is great industrial application value by integrating network characteristics, platform elements, integrated mechanism, collaborative model and ecological format. In this paper, the system model of NCMP is constructed from four perspectives, including network perspective, collaborative manufacturing perspective, platform perspective, and industrial ecosystem perspective. Then, a system framework of NCMP based on three chains (manufacturing chain, value chain, and industrial chain) is proposed. Three collaborative subsystems of NCMP (vertical collaboration subsystem from multi perspective, horizontal collaboration subsystem from multi process, end to end collaboration subsystem from multi operator) are constructed. At last, a comprehensive system construction for NCMP in automobile industry is giving. The research results show that the most important elements to construct NCMP are purchasing department collaboration, demand department collaboration, design collaboration, data integration between enterprises and factories, etc.     

A QFD-based method to support SMEs in benchmarking co-design tools

Efficient collaborative product design is crucial for extended enterprises willing to develop complex products pursuing a short time to market. However, successful collaborative product design depends on the ability to effectively manage and share engineering knowledge and data throughout the entire product development process. Co-design software platforms aim to facilitate cooperation in distributed teams. In the context of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) the advanced co-design software implementation to support the supply chain is not a trivial task. SMEs have peculiar characteristics such as flexibility, ICT skills and financial resources, which are difficult to be integrated within a structured design network. This paper presents a method to define and evaluate a co-design platform dedicated to SMEs in the mechanical product field. System architecture is defined by applying suitable metrics based on collaborative process characteristics in order to assess functionality performance of the available tools. Benchmarking is based on different levels of collaboration recognized in the typical product development process in SMEs. Correlation between process metrics, software functionalities and specific collaboration requirements is managed by adopting Quality Function Deployment (QFD) techniques. A practical case study allows the robustness of the proposed method to be verified and the main advantages and future developments to be discussed.     

Supporting collaborative engineering design

The complexity of current engineering design demands the collaboration of specialists. Collaboration involves both communication between and coordination among members of a design team. Currently, design collaboration is carried out through the use of schedules, specifications and drawings which only capture the end results of the design process. They fail to record important design information such as the reasoning behind design decisions. In this paper, we describe a tool CADS, that supports collaboration in engineering design. CADS is based on an extension to the Axiomatic Design methodology which not only captures the design elements but also the rationale used to conceive them. CADS serves as a shared database of design information with facilities that support communication and coordination in engineering design.Currently at the Media Laboratory, MIT.     

Fostering collaborative learning in Second Life: Metaphors and affordances

In this paper we examine the transferability of the Jigsaw and Fishbowl collaborative learning techniques to the Second Life platform. Our aim is to assess the applicability of Second Life for collaborative learning by developing virtual tools and metaphors and exploiting the representational richness of this novel medium. In order to enhance the existing metaphors and affordances of SL, our research team implemented educational spaces, avatar clothing, and tools for non-verbal communication and visualisation. By implementing a blended learning evaluation approach we attempted to answer three research questions focusing on student collaboration, avatar representation and learning space awareness. We can conclude that SL can supplement and/or augment face to face interactions, improving upon previous approaches in distance collaboration and communication. Furthermore, although our team augmented SL’s ability to support collaborative learning, avatar representation does not seem to scale well. Finally, the majority of the implemented affordances and metaphors seem to have enhanced collaboration and learning space awareness.     

协同虚拟样机的信息集成研究

协同虚拟样机的信息集成在整个协同虚拟样机系统工程中起着非常关键的作用，该文首先提出了协同虚拟样机信息集成的总体结构，并详细介绍了该总体结构中各服务层的具体内容及其它们之间的互操作／接口，另外，本文讨论了信息管理模块与协同仿真平台之间的互操作、与各领域工具／应用程序之间的接口。该文对构建协同虚拟样机的信息管理平台有着很好的指导作用。     

An Integrated Telepresence Environment for Collaboration in Construction

For construction projects involving transient ‘virtual organisations’ composed of non-collocated team-members, the adoption of concurrent engineering principles is seen as vital. An important aspect of concurrent engineering in construction is the need for an effective communications infrastructure between team members. Traditionally, such communication has been handled through person-to-person meetings, however the complexity of construction projects has grown and, as a result, reliance on new information and communications technologies is becoming increasingly necessary. Hence, within a concurrent engineering setting, there is the need for an integrated information and collaboration environment that will create a persistent space to support interaction between project personnel throughout all phases of construction projects. This joint initiative between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Loughborough University, British Telecommunications plc. (BT) and Kajima Corporation explores computer-supported mechanisms for enhancing distributed engineering collaboration. The goal of this paper is to develop a set of requirements, a system architecture and a system prototype to facilitate computer-supported collaboration among distributed teams. The prototype consists of a comprehensive working collaborative system built from the integration of complementary standalone applications. These applications are the CAIRO system, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Telepresence system developed by Loughborough University and BT.     

Distribution and synchronisation of engineering information using active database technology

Today, work collaboration is normal practice in developing modern products. Engineering collaborative work involves a number of team members that need to share and exchange design ideas while working with engineering analysis tools such as mechanical computer aided engineering systems. This work presents the M-Sync prototype system that uses an active database approach to enable exchange of engineering information among distributed team members in a timely manner. The distributed data is fully accessible by the local member and is automatically synchronised between different places using a database management system that support event-condition-action (ECA) database rules. Only updates introduced at one location are distributed to other locations, thereby minimizing information transfer and enhancing performance. Members working at different locations can therefore work in a peer-to-peer (P2P) manner and interactively manipulate the same set of information at the same time.     

The foundations of a theory-aware authoring tool for CSCL design

One of the most useful ways to enhance collaboration is to create scenarios where learners are able to interact more effectively. Nevertheless, the design of pedagogically sound and well-thought-out collaborative learning scenarios is a complex issue. This is due to the context of group learning where the synergy among learners’ interactions affects learning processes and, hence, the learning outcome. Although many advances have been made to support the designing of collaborative learning scenarios through technology, a more systematic approach is lacking. With the limitations of the current designing methods and tools, it is difficult to develop intelligent authoring systems that can guide users in order to produce more effective collaboration. One of the main difficulties with creating a more consistent (computer-understandable) approach to designing collaboration is the necessity of proposing better ways to formalize the group learning processes. In this paper, we present an innovative approach that uses ontologies and concepts from learning theories to create a framework that represents collaborative learning and its processes. Ontologies provide the necessary formalization to represent collaboration, while learning theories provide the concepts to justify and support the development of effective learning scenarios. Such an approach contributes to establish the foundations for the development of the next generation of intelligent authoring systems referred to as theory-aware systems. To verify the viability and usefulness of our proposed ontological framework in the context of systematic design, the development and use of an intelligent authoring tool for CSCL design is presented. This system is able to reason on ontologies to give suggestions that help users to create theory-compliant collaborative learning scenarios. We carried out several experiments with teachers in a geometry drawing course and the results indicate that the system helps teachers to create and interchange their scenarios more easily and facilitates the selection of important pedagogical strategies that influence positively the designing and effectiveness of group activities.     

Knowledge-based system for collaborative process specification

This paper presents an ontology-based approach for the design of a collaborative business process model (CBP). This CBP is considered as a specification of needs in order to build a collaboration information system (CIS) for a network of organizations. The study is a part of a model-driven engineering approach of the CIS in a specific enterprise interoperability framework that will be summarised. An adaptation of the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) is used to represent the CBP model. We develop a knowledge-based system (KbS) which is composed of three main parts: knowledge gathering, knowledge representation and reasoning, and collaborative business process modelling. The first part starts from a high abstraction level where knowledge from business partners is captured. A collaboration ontology is defined in order to provide a structure to store and use the knowledge captured. In parallel, we try to reuse generic existing knowledge about business processes from the MIT Process Handbook repository. This results in a collaboration process ontology that is also described. A set of rules is defined in order to extract knowledge about fragments of the CBP model from the two previous ontologies. These fragments are finally assembled in the third part of the KbS. A prototype of the KbS has been developed in order to implement and support this approach. The prototype is a computer-aided design tool of the CBP. In this paper, we will present the theoretical aspects of each part of this KbS as well as the tools that we developed and used in order to support its functionalities.     

Internet-enabled real-time collaborative assembly modeling via an e-Assembly system: status and promise

Collaborative CAD systems enabling collaboration in computer-aided design processes among distributed designers are gaining more and more attention. Yet, such systems, especially in support of collaborative assembly modeling, are hardly achievable. Targeting this gap, this paper addresses an Internet-enabled real-time collaborative assembly modeling system, named e-Assembly. This emerging system allows a group of geographically dispersed designers to jointly build an assembly model in real time over the Internet. In particular, this paper proposes a new assembly representation, called Collaborative Assembly Representation, for Internet-based collaborative assembly modeling. Also, collaborative assembly constraint satisfaction is addressed based on three coordination rules embedded in e-Assembly. Furthermore, the system architecture and realization of e-Assembly are provided. Finally, a prototypic implementation of e-Assembly is presented for demonstration and discussion.     

Collaborative innovation in ubiquitous systems

Advances in microelectronics, semiconductor and information and communication technologies allow the creation and the development of ubiquitous systems. These intelligent systems would enable and support new dimensions of collaboration that can make business processes more efficient. In this paper, we analyse the possible contribution of the upcoming level of intelligence to collaborative innovation processes within and between enterprises as well. Considering collaborative networks and virtual organisations we propose a cyclic structure for innovation and a number of ubiquitous systems that have the potential to support different phases of the process. They would empower already existing Data Management Systems by functionalities and features of ubiquity and contribute to the future extension of the product lifecycle management approach (PLM).     

Synchronous collaborative tunnel design based on consistency-preserving multi-scale models

The planning of large infrastructure projects such as inner-city subway tracks is a highly collaborative process in which numerous experts from different domains are involved. While performing the planning task, widely differing scales have to be taken into consideration, ranging from the kilometer scale for the general routing of the track down to the centimeter scale for the detailed design of connection points. Currently there is no technology available which supports both the collaborative as well as the multi-scale aspect in an adequate manner. To fill this technological gap and better support the collaborative design and engineering activities involved with infrastructure planning, this paper introduces a new methodology which allows engineers to simultaneously manipulate a shared multi-scale tunnel model. This methodology comprises two main aspects. The first aspect is a multi-scale model for shield tunnels, which provides five different levels of detail (LoD) representing the different levels of abstraction required throughout the planning progress. The second aspect is a conceived collaboration platform, which enables simultaneous modifications of the multi-scale model by multiple users. In existing multi-scale approaches, where the individual representations are stored independently from each other, there is a high risk of creating inconsistencies, in particular in the highly dynamic collaborative planning context. To overcome this issue, the concept presented in this paper makes use of procedural modeling techniques for creating explicit dependencies between the geometric entities on the different LoDs. This results in a highly flexible, yet inherently consistent multi-scale model where the manipulation of elements on coarser LoDs results in an automated update of all dependent elements on finer LoDs. The proposed multi-scale model forms a well-suited basis for realizing the collaboration concept, which allows several experts to simultaneously manipulate a shared infrastructure model on various scales while using the different design tools they are accustomed to. The paper discusses in detail the principles and advantages of the proposed multi-scale modeling approach as well as its application in the context of collaborative tunnel design. The paper concludes with a case study of a large infrastructure project: a new inner-city subway tunnel in Munich, Germany.