Multiagent Design Architecture for Intelligent Synthesis Environment

Abstract

The intelligent synthesis environment (ISE) represents the integration of a broad range of high-fidelity knowledge at the design stage to facilitate the product realization process. ISE has the potential of reducing the product realization time by several orders of magnitude. The key characteristics of ISE are integrated evaluation of product life-cycle stages in a virtual environment, coordination of asynchronous design activities, design configuration selection based on multiple design criteria, and interoperability among heterogeneous software and hardware environments to accomplish an effective collaborative computational system. Multiagent design architecture (MADA) is designed to provide a flexible integration framework for ISE. This architecture provides seamless integration of product realization activities across heterogeneous machines, computing platforms, programming languages, data, and process representations using distributed intelligent agents. An agent in the context of MADA is an autonomous computational entity that is capable of migrating across computing environments asynchronously. These agents have intelligence in the form of individual goals, beliefs, learning mechanisms and interact cooperatively to accomplish overall product design objectives. An application of the MADA information framework for the design of aerospace components is presented. Specifically, the use of integrated design and analysis tools for creating a high-speed civil transport exhaust nozzle is demonstrated.