This paper aims at automatically generating dimensioned floorplans while considering constraints given by the users in the form of adjacency and connectivity graph. The obtained floorplans also satisfy boundary constraints where users will be asked to choose their preferred location based on cardinal and inter-cardinal directions. Further, spanning circulations are inserted within the generated floorplans. The larger aim of this research is to provide alternative architecturally feasible layouts to users which can be further refined by architects.

Digital platform business models are disrupting traditional business processes and reveal a new way of creating value. Current validation processes for business models are designed to assess pipeline business models. They cannot grasp the logic of digital platforms, which increasingly integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) to ensure success. This study developed a new validation process for early market validation of digital platform business models by following the Design Science Research methodology. The designed process, the Smart Platform Experiment Cycle (SPEC), is created by combining the Four-Step Iterative Cycle of business experiments, the Customer Development Process, and the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop of the Lean Startup approach and enriching it with the knowledge of digital platforms. It consists of five iterative steps showing the startup how to design their platform business model and corresponding experiments and how to run, measure, analyze, and learn from the outcomes and results. To assess its efficacy, applicability, and validity, SPEC was applied in the German startup GassiAlarm, a service marketplace business model. The application of SPEC revealed shortcomings in the pricing strategy and highlighted to what extent their current business model would be successful. SPEC reduces the risk of building a product or service the market deems redundant and gives insights into its success rate. More applications of the SPEC are needed to validate its robustness further and to extend it to other types of digital platform business models for improved generalization.

Aiming to help researchers capture output from the early stages of engineering design projects, this article presents a new research tool for digitally capturing physical prototypes. The motivation for this work is to collect observations that can aid in understanding prototyping in the early stages of engineering design projects, and this article investigates if and how digital capture of physical prototypes can be used for this purpose. Early-stage prototypes are usually rough and of low fidelity and are thus often discarded or substantially modified through the projects. Hence, retrospective access to prototypes is a challenge when trying to gather accurate empirical data. To capture the prototypes developed through the early stages of a project, a new research tool has been developed for capturing prototypes through multi-view images, along with metadata describing by whom, why, when, and where the prototypes were captured. Over the course of 17 months, this research tool has been used to capture more than 800 physical prototypes from 76 individual users across many projects. In this article, one project is shown in detail to demonstrate how this capturing system can gather empirical data for enriching engineering design project cases that focus on prototyping for concept generation. The authors also analyze the metadata provided by the system to give understanding into prototyping patterns in the projects. Lastly, through enabling digital capture of large quantities of data, the research tool presents the foundations for training artificial intelligence-based predictors and classifiers that can be used for analysis in engineering design research.

Studies show that there are shortcomings in applying conventional methods for the emotional evaluation of the aircraft cockpit. In order to resolve this problem, a more efficient cockpit emotion evaluation system is established in the present study to simply and quickly obtain the cockpit emotion evaluation value. To this end, the neural network is applied to construct an emotional model to evaluate the emotional prediction of the interior design of the aircraft cockpit. Moreover, several technologies and the Kansei engineering method are applied to acquire the cockpit interior emotional evaluation data for typical aircraft models. In this regard, the radical basis function neural network (RBFNN), Elman neural network (ENN), and the general regression neural network (GRNN) are applied to construct the sentimental prediction evaluation model. Then, the three models are comprehensively compared through factors such as the model evaluation criteria, network structure, and network parameters. Obtained experimental results indicate that the GRNN not only has the highest classification accuracy but also has the highest stability in comparison to the other two neural networks, so that it is a more appropriate method for the emotional evaluation of the aircraft cockpit. Results of the present study provide decision supports for the emotional evaluation of the cockpit interior space.

In order to realize the online allocation of collaborative processing resource of smart workshop in the context of cloud manufacturing, a multi-objective optimization model of workshop collaborative resources (MOM-WCR) was proposed. Considering the optimization objectives of processing time, processing cost, product qualification rate, and resource utilization, MOM-WCR was constructed. Based on the time sequence of workshop processing tasks, the workshop collaborative manufacturing resource was integrated in MOM-WCR. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) was adopted to simplified the multi-objective problem into the single-objective problem. Then, the improved firefly algorithm which integrated the particle swarm algorithm (IFA-PSA) was used to solve MOM-WCR. Finally, a group of connecting rod processing experiments were used to verify the model proposed in this paper. The results show that the model is feasible in the application of workshop-level resource allocation in the context of cloud manufacturing, and the improved firefly algorithm shows good performance in solving the multi-objective resource allocation problem.

The potential relationship between service demands and remanufacturing services (RMS) is essential to make the decision of a RMS plan accurately and improve the efficiency and benefit. In the traditional association rule mining methods, a large number of candidate sets affect the mining efficiency, and the results are not easy for customers to understand. Therefore, a mining method based on binary particle swarm optimization ant colony algorithm to discover service demands and remanufacture services association rules is proposed. This method preprocesses the RMS records, converts them into a binary matrix, and uses the improved ant colony algorithm to mine the maximum frequent itemset. Because the particle swarm algorithm determines the initial pheromone concentration of the ant colony, it avoids the blindness of the ant colony, effectively enhances the searchability of the algorithm, and makes association rule mining faster and more accurate. Finally, a set of historical RMS record data of straightening machine is used to test the validity and feasibility of this method by extracting valid association rules to guide the design of RMS scheme for straightening machine parts.

A deeper understanding of creativity and design is essential for the development of tools to improve designers’ creative processes and drive future innovation. The objective of this research is to evaluate the effect of physical activity versus movement in a virtual environment on the creative output of industrial design students. This study contributes a novel assessment of whether the use of virtual reality can produce the same creative output within designers as physical activity has been shown to produce in prior studies. Eighteen industrial design students at the Georgia Institute of Technology completed nine design tasks across three conditions in a within-subjects experimental design. In each condition, participants independently experienced one of three interventions. Solutions were scored for novelty and feasibility, and self-reported mood data was correlated with performance. No significant differences were found in novelty or feasibility of solutions across the conditions. However, there are statistically significant correlations between mood, interventions, and peak performance to be discussed. The results show that participants who experienced movement in virtual reality prior to problem solving performed at an equal or higher level than physical walking for all design tasks and all designer moods. This serves as motivation for continuing to study how VR can provide an impact on a designer's creative output. Hypothesized creative performance with each mode is discussed using trends from four categories of mood, based on the combined mood characteristics of pleasantness (positive/negative) and activation (active/passive).

A user interface (UI) design that meets the preferences, differences, and needs of the group of users can potentially increase the usability of a system. Users, in general, feel more familiar with the context that reflects their cultural values and practices. The Arabic culture plays a significant role in how Arab users interact and communicate with technologies. The customs, artifacts, and traditions of the Arab world are different in nature from the Western cultures. Thus, it is essential to consider these differences when designing the UI prototype. This study investigated the role of certain cultural preferences in the design of UI for Arab users. A think-aloud approach and Hofstede's cultural dimensions were used on 23 Arab users to generate the necessary design guidelines for the UI of mobile health application. Then, 78 participants were recruited to evaluate the proposed UI design. The usability results showed high satisfaction among Arab users about the role of culture in the design of the UI. Findings from this study can be used by designers and developers to aid their design of UI for group-specific cultural preferences and values.

Machine learning components such as deep neural networks are used extensively in cyber-physical systems (CPS). However, such components may introduce new types of hazards that can have disastrous consequences and need to be addressed for engineering trustworthy systems. Although deep neural networks offer advanced capabilities, they must be complemented by engineering methods and practices that allow effective integration in CPS. In this paper, we proposed an approach for assurance monitoring of learning-enabled CPS based on the conformal prediction framework. In order to allow real-time assurance monitoring, the approach employs distance learning to transform high-dimensional inputs into lower size embedding representations. By leveraging conformal prediction, the approach provides well-calibrated confidence and ensures a bounded small error rate while limiting the number of inputs for which an accurate prediction cannot be made. We demonstrate the approach using three datasets of mobile robot following a wall, speaker recognition, and traffic sign recognition. The experimental results demonstrate that the error rates are well-calibrated while the number of alarms is very small. Furthermore, the method is computationally efficient and allows real-time assurance monitoring of CPS.