适用于工程设计的多智体协商冲突解决方法研究

讨论和分析了工程设计协作的特点和产生设计冲突的原因，根据分布式人工智能的思想，给出了适用于工程设计的多智体协商冲突解决模型和相关的冲突化解方法，其目的是通过工程设计过程中的冲突发现和冲突化解，提高设计效率，减少设计错误，降低成本。     

A negotiation support system for resolving an international trans-boundary natural resource conflict

Post-Soviet legal governance regime of Caspian Sea – the largest inland body of water on earth – remains a source of conflict among the five coastal states of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan. Although different division methods have been suggested for sharing the sea and its valuable resources, the actual gain of the countries is unclear as the proposed methods focus either on the oil and gas or the areal share of the parties. The Caspian Sea Negotiation Support System (Caspian Sea NSS) is developed in this study to delineate optimal boundaries for sharing the sea through simultaneous consideration of the countries' areal and resource shares under different sharing methods. This NSS is a complex optimization model, with a solver engine that provides reliable results with a reasonable computational effort using a heuristic method. The model is run under different division scenarios to evaluate the sensitivity of each party's gain and locations of nautical boundaries to the division rules and the economic values of the resources. Results show a high sensitivity of the optimal nautical boundaries to the division rules and an indirect relationship between the allocated area and resource shares. The findings highlight the necessity for considering utility shares in negotiations as opposed to adopting areal division rules which ignore the utilities and might result in unfair resource allocation. The main policy implication of the study is that clarification of the countries' resource and areal gain under any suggested legal regime for governing the Caspian Sea is essential to the success of the negotiations.     

面向并行工程的虚拟样机设计方法研究

虚拟样机是一种能够反映实际产品特性的数字化模型,可有效支持并行工程和并行设计。在分析了虚拟样机与并行工程关系的基础上,提出了基于虚拟样机的产品研发方法,并阐述了虚拟样机设计方法一体化解决方案。     

协同设计中的模糊冲突消解方法

针对协同设计中方案层次冲突,提出了一种模糊冲突消解方法,首先采用了模糊关系的概念对冲突的产生进行了数学描述,并对冲突的原因进行了数学解释,根据模糊数学中相似优先比来建立设计方案与单个最优方案间的模糊关系矩阵,通过取适当的λ水平截集找出与个体最优方案最接近的整体最优方案,从而在满足整体性能前提下,达到个体方案之间冲突最小的目的。最后应用减速器型谱系列技术指标,说明了该算法的有效性。     

A negotiation methodology for multidisciplinary collaborative product design

The collaborative design of a complicated mechanical product often involves conflicting multidisciplinary objectives, thus one key problem is conflict resolution and coordination among the different disciplines. Since the characteristics such as cooperative competition, professional dependence, compromise, overall utility and so on exist in multidisciplinary collaborative design (MCD), an effective way to gradually eliminate the conflicts among the multiple disciplines and reach an agreement is the negotiation by which a compromise solution that satisfies all parties is got. By comprehensively analyzing the characteristics in MCD and considering the benefit equilibrium among discipline individuals and team, a negotiation strategy is presented, which maximize the union satisfaction degree of system overall objective under the premise of ensuring the higher satisfaction degree level of each discipline’s local objective. A design action of a discipline is abstractly expressed as a concession in the negotiation strategy, and a negotiation model used for MCD is generated by establishing the relation between concession and satisfaction degree. By the relation between satisfaction degree and objective function, the mapping relationship between satisfaction degree domain and physical domain is built to get the design solution. A negotiation process is planned, and a negotiation system framework is designed to support the negotiation among multiple disciplines and assist the different disciplines rapidly reach a consistent compromise solution. A design example of automotive friction clutch is given to illustrate the proposed method.     

A decision support system for product design in concurrent engineering

Compared with the traditional sequential design method, concurrent engineering is a systematic approach to integrate concurrent design of products and their related processes. One of the key factors to successfully implement concurrent engineering is information technology. In order to design a product and its manufacturing process simultaneously, information on product features, manufacturing requirements, and customer demands must be processed while the design is concurrently going on. There is an increased understanding of the importance of the correct decisions being made at the conceptual design and development stages that involve many complex evaluation and decision-making tasks. In order to promote the efficiency in concurrent product development, appropriate evaluation and decision tools need to be provided. In this paper, the characteristics of fuzzy, multi-stage evaluation and decision making in concurrent product development process are analyzed and a decision support system for product design in concurrent engineering is presented. An example is given to illustrate the application of the system.     

协同设计中的冲突体系及解决方法研究

对冲突在协同设计中所处的时期、层次及冲突属性三个维度进行了分析,并据此构建了一个协同设计冲突体系,在设计理念、应用、系统三个层次上对冲突的表现和导致的后果进行了说明。指出了冲突之间的关系在冲突解决问题上的重要性,在此基础上给出了一个面向冲突体系的冲突解决策略,这一策略能够更好地应对协同设计中冲突的复杂性和动态性,最后给出了关键算法的实现。     

An agent-based framework for cooperating expert systems in concurrent engineering

This paper describes an agent-based framework with a tandem integration architecture for cooperating distributed, heterogeneous, and autonomous concurrent engineering systems. The approach has been experimented with using the prototype AGENTS system. It is demonstrated that design tools can be dynamically connected and configured to construct highly complex systems on an incremental basis, designing and proving one system at a time without bothering the rest. A major advantage of the approach is the balance between the interoperability and the autonomy of individual systems.     

Problem-centered design in concurrent engineering

This paper introduces the concept of incorporating the human and computerised elements of a design team into a single co-operating system, moving away from the model of a computer system supporting a single user towards being part of a heterarchy of agents. This augments classic CSCW where the computer is a facilitator to that where the computerised elements are active participants.

Within that collection of agents the humans are not only using the computers to solve their own problems but are deployed to satisfy the computers requirements; the whole system being designed to satisfy the customers' requirements. In a design and production environment the primary user is the problem which interfaces to the agents who combine to deliver a solution.

Relevance to industry

Rather than take a computer- or user-centred viewpoint, we argue for a holist cybernetic approach integrating both with the focus on the problem rather than any particular component. Where systems are largely user-driven, such as word processing, then the problem will naturally lean towards a user-centred design. In contrast the solution of large sets of differential equations requires little user involvement and so the focus leans naturally towards the computational aspects. Most systems lie between these extremes. Concurrent engineering is concerned with integrating many aspects of design and manufacture and so requires such a holistic approach to succeed.     

Collaborative negotiation for ontology-driven enterprise businesses

The requirements from a globalised world demand that enterprises not only shift their paradigm from product-centrism to component-centrism on integrated products, potentiating the need for tight interoperability dependencies, but also that the product specifications and concepts are fully understood by customers and providers in a transparent manner that surpasses the barriers of language, culture and technology. This paper presents the NEGOSEIO framework, which enables service-based interoperability between parties, closely integrated with semantics and business understanding via the use of reference ontologies in the quest for achieving a stronger interoperability liaison. The paper's validation and discussion is performed in its application on the ontology negotiation of business environments in the scope of the EU-funded FP7 project TIMBUS for digital preservation of resources and enduring business continuity.     

Argumentation-based negotiation planning for autonomous agents

When we negotiate, the arguments uttered to persuade the opponent are not the result of an isolated analysis, but of an integral view of the problem that we want to agree about. Before the negotiation starts, we have in mind what arguments we can utter, what opponent we can persuade, which negotiation can finish successfully and which cannot. Thus, we plan the negotiation, and in particular, the argumentation. This fact allows us to take decisions in advance and to start the negotiation more confidently. With this in mind, we claim that this planning can be exploited by an autonomous agent. Agents plan the actions that they should execute to achieve their goals. In these plans, some actions are under the agent's control, while some others are not. The latter must be negotiated with other agents. Negotiation is usually carried out during the plan execution. In our opinion, however, negotiation can be considered during the planning stage, as in real life. In this paper, we present a novel approach to integrate argumentation-based negotiation planning into the general planning process of an autonomous agent. This integration allows the agent to take key decisions in advance. We evaluated this proposal in a multiagent scenario by comparing the performance of agents that plan the argumentation and agents that do not. These evaluations demonstrated that performance improves when the argumentation is planned, specially, when the negotiation alternatives increase.     

Knowledge-based hand tool selection in concurrent design of mechanical systems

Selection of hand tools for cost-effective assembly and maintenance of a mechanical system has a significant impact on its life-cycle cost. A knowledge-based automated procedure for the selection of hand tools needed to efficiently carry out fastening operations in a mechanical assembly is presented. The objective is to select a tool that is applicable to a particular fastening operation, minimizes time and cost of the fastening operation, and satisfies accessibility requirements, and to provide design assistance to the design engineer. The role of the tool selection procedure in the concurrent design of mechanical systems is described.     

A quantitative method used in negotiation support systems

It is important for small and medium sized business to enter international market with an electronic international trade network-the Marketplace, which is a large and synthetic computer-based network to enable an organization to engage in buying and selling products and services across national borders almost as easily as one can conduct such business locally. As one of its necessary components, Negotiation Support Systems(NSS) aid negotiators to bargain and reach agreement in negotiation process. On the basis of discussing the framework and capabilities of the Marketplace and the theory of negotiation, this paper introduces a quantitative method used in negotiation support system, which systematically analyses trade-offs between variables and is an additive scoring method to get to the efficient frontier in order to recommend high quality alternatives near it. The principle and techniques of this approach are also suggested.     

egoisst: a negotiation support system for electronic business-to-business negotiations in e-commerce

Electronic negotiations can range from simple offer exchanges to complex communicative acts concerning packages of products and services. In contrast to dominant approaches aiming at automating the negotiation process (e.g. auction models), we introduce the notion of negotiation support for human negotiators conducting complex electronic negotiations. The negotiation support system egoisst for business-to-business electronic commerce is presented that is based on theories of communication and information systems and that combines communication and document management. egoisst has been successfully validated for e-negotiations in the construction industry.     

Multidisciplinary design optimisation and robust design approaches applied to concurrent design

The increasing economic competition of all industrial markets and growing complexity of engineering problems lead to a progressive specialisation and distribution of expertise, tools and work sites. Most industrial sectors manage this fragmentation using the concurrent engineering approach, which is based on tools integration and shared databases and requires significant investments in design and work organisation. Besides, the multidisciplinary design optimisation (MDO) is more and more used as a method for optimal solutions search with regard to multiple coupled disciplines. The paper describes a quite innovative multidisciplinary optimisation method based on robust design techniques: MORDACE (multidisciplinary optimisation and robust design approaches applied to concurrent engineering). Managing uncertainty due to design teams collaboration, our automatic optimisation strategy allows concurrently designing different aspects or parts of a complex product. The method assures effective design work distribution and high optimisation results, containing the CPU time. In addition, our strategy is suited to the early stages of the design cycle, where evolutions of design goals and constraints are possible and exhaustive information about the design space is necessary. A roll stabiliser fin optimisation is presented as an example of this method applied to an industrial design problem.     

一种基于情绪量的多机器人冲突消解方法

针对动态非结构化环境下多机器人之间存在的空间冲突问题,提出了一种基于情绪量的多机器人冲突消解方法。该方法可以使机器人根据情绪量自主判定对其他机器人的躲避半径,无须预先设定固定的避碰优先级或进行机器人之间的协商。仿真结果表明该方法是一种有效的多机器人冲突消解方法。     

一种基于对象技术的协同设计方法

研究了虚拟样机概念设计中多用户并发设计的信息存储与设计信息表示，针对最常用的STEP数据交换标准，提出了基于对象的设计信息融合及冲突检测与解决机制，并给出了这项技术在某导弹武器系统总体概念多用户协同设计中的作用。     

A hybrid distributed-centralized conflict resolution approach for multi-aircraft based on cooperative co-evolutionary

Conflict resolution （CR） plays a crucial role in safe air traffic management （ATM）. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid distributed-centralized tactical CR approach based on cooperative co-evolutionary named the CCDG （cooperative co-evolutionary with dynamic grouping） strategy to overcome the drawbacks of the current two types of approaches, the totally centralized approach and distributed approach. Firstly, aircraft are divided into several sub-groups based on their interdependence. Besides, a dynamic grouping strategy is proposed to group the aircraft to better deal with the tight coupling among them. The sub-groups are adjusted dynamically as new conflicts appear after each iteration. Secondly, a fast genetic algorithm （GA） is used by each sub-group to optimize the paths of the aircraft simultaneously. Thirdly, the aircraft＇s optimal paths are obtained through cooperation among different sub-groups based on cooperative co-evolutionary （CC）. An experimental study on two illustrative scenarios is conducted to compare the CCDG method with some other existing approaches and it is shown that CCDG which can get the optimal solution effectively and efficiently in near real time, outperforms most of the existing approaches including Stratway, the fast GA, a general evolutionary path planner, as well as three well-known cooperative co-evolution algorithms.     

Re-engineering of the design process for concurrent engineering

According to the requirements of concurrent engineering, three interdependency relationships (uncoupled relationship, coupled relationship and decoupled relationship) between design activities are presented in this paper. And the coupled relationship plays an important role in concurrent product design process. To represent the precedence relationships among design activities, a directed graph is used to describe the design process. And the interdependency relationship between activities is illustrated by a Design Structure Matrix which is the transpose of the accessibility matrix of the corresponding graph. Using the DSM, an algorithm of recognizing the coupled activities during the design process is presented. Moreover, an algorithm to figure out the order levels of activities during the design process is proposed. And both algorithms are illustrated with a die design example.     

基于专家系统的并行工程冲突解决的研究

如何解决设计领域中出现的冲突问题一直是并行工程研究的一个重要课题。该文分析了设计领域冲突的特点,提出了面向对象的冲突知识表达形式,以及规则推理机制,实现了基于专家系统的冲突解决方法。该系统得到了实践的检验,有力地支持了并行工程的实施。