Advanced Digital Design Research Articles

Surfaces of coastal biogenic structures: exploiting advanced digital design and fabrication strategies for the manufacturing of oyster reef and mussel bed surrogates

Coastal biogenic structures, formed by ecosystem engineering species, often feature rough surfaces characterized by intricate topographies and highly three-dimensional reliefs. Their surfaces are shaped by waves and tidal currents and reciprocally influence the ambient hydrodynamics, reflecting an equilibrium. Despite their significance, the impact of these surfaces on the ambient hydrodynamics remains underexplored due to limited knowledge of accurately replicating their complex topographies in experimental setups. The recent advent of advanced digital manufacturing presents an efficient means to manufacture highly complex, three-dimensional surrogate models for experimental modeling. This work explores the accurate replication of rough coastal biogenic structures for experimental modeling on the examples of an oyster reef and a mussel bed, utilizing a flexible design methodology and, for the first time, particle bed 3D printing with Selective Cement Activation (SCA) as a fabrication and manufacturing method. A workflow is proposed, which includes an iterative surrogate model development based on in-situ topographical features, requirements of the experimental setup, and parameters of the particle bed 3D printer with SCA. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the methodology in achieving highly accurate surrogate surfaces of complex coastal biogenic structures by validation against a set of topographical features relevant to hydraulic roughness. Particle bed 3D printing with SCA proved to be a suitable method to manufacture complex surrogate surfaces for experimental modeling, offering advantages such as independence of production time from surface complexity. However, challenges persist in achieving exact comparability between the manufactured surrogate surface and the real coastal biogenic structures, particularly for surfaces with very high complexity. Nonetheless, the manufactured generic surrogate surfaces enable detailed investigations into the influence of complex coastal biogenic structures on the ambient hydrodynamics, thereby enhancing the understanding of the processes governing wave energy dissipation attenuation, turbulence production, and vertical mixing – critical for efficient application as a nature-based solution on coastal protection or restoration efforts.

The Impact of Virtual Reality Integration in Robotics: Enhancing Efficiency, Safety, and Human-Robot Interaction

In this paper, a review of the implementation of Virtual Reality (VR) with robotics and how it has changed various areas is explored. In general, VR improves efficiency and safety in operational work—especially in the energy sector, where it optimizes substation operations (e.g., increasing accuracy by up to 25% due to a higher level of automation). For mechatronics, VR allows advanced digital design, such as virtual prototyping and collaborative simulation, which significantly increase system efficiency. In education, VR technology has increased student engagement and learning outcomes by up to 40%, improving participation in subjects such as natural sciences. VR integration into robotics also enables the testing of various movements and trajectories for safety, resulting in minimal damages incurred during the design phase and increased productivity. VR also enhances human-robot interaction by enabling intuitive control based on better gesture recognition and a 35% increase in precision. In future applications, the remote operation of robots in dangerous environments will greatly improve emergency rescue efficiency and speed. Using VR for substation operations has translated to 25% better accuracy and a similar gain in terms of operational efficiency. By providing a more connected, efficient future in multiple spheres and delivering about 40% fewer accidents during simulations, the fusion of VR with robotics is an overall successful venture.

CONSTRUCTION BASED ON MAN-MACHINE COLLABORATION - A CASE STUDY OF A BAMBOO PAVILION

With the development of advanced digital design approaches and mechanical facilities, architectural intelligence liberates conventional construction from conventional paradigms. Computational design and digital fabrication have achieved progress in space innovation, construction efficiency, and material effectiveness. However, those high-tech manufacturing techniques are not widely available in developing countries, where the locals used to carry construction experience from age to age in a nonacademic way. This study explored a collaborative workflow of complex structural design and machine-aided construction in Chinese rural areas. First, we designed a bamboo pavilion parametrically in an irregular site on a hill. Second, its primary structure was optimized based on determining critical load and earthquake resistance to meet local building codes. Then, before material processing, every bamboo component was numbered by algorithm, with its location and morphological data of length and radian calculated accurately on the construction drawings. In the transitional process from the conventional paradigm by experience towards man-machine collaboration, local workers' manual techniques helped minimize construction errors and improve details, which were not adequately predicted and considered beforehand. This study case suggested that respective advantages of both traditional and digital modes should be integrated and balanced based on collaboration between local construction workers and professional researchers, especially as a social role for future vernacular architecture practice.

Scientific and Technological Potential as the Main Factor for Agricultural Mechanization Development

The priority direction for the scientific and technological development of the agro-industrial complex is shown to be the transition to advanced digital smart technologies, robotic systems, new materials and design methods, to artificial intelligence. The importance of further evolution is noted for such areas as agro-engineering science and education, cooperation of agro-engineering institutions, innovative approaches and solutions that reflect the current state and tendencies in the development of the agro-industrial complex. The relevance is substantiated for studying the experience of the foundation and development of a system of agro-engineering scientific institutes, agro-engineering universities, machine trial stations, whose coordinated activity made it possible to form a powerful scientific and technological potential, build a multi-profile integrated agro-industrial production and ensure the country's food security.Research purpose To identify the general evolutionary factors in the development of specialized infrastructure institutions, the key development features of a scientific agro-engineering platform for creating the domestic systems and complexes of agricultural machines.Materials and methods Established the chronological framework of the study, noting the features of the three main periods of the last century. Characterized the reforms of agroengineering scientific and educational institutions.Results and discussion The evolutionary factors of the formation of agroengineering universities, scientific institutions, machine testing stations in 1920-2020 are investigated and identified.Conclusions It is proved that the formed and continuously developing scientific and technological potential became the basis for creating the systems of highly efficient agricultural machinery and equipment, contributed to the agriculture transformation into a highly efficient mechanized production and ensured the country's food security.

Design and analysis of multiple read port techniques using bank division with XOR method for multi-ported-memory on FPGA platform

<span lang="EN-US">The multiple read and write operations are performed simultaneously by multi-ported memories and are used in advanced digital design applications on reprogrammable field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to achieve higher bandwidth. The Memory modules are configured by block RAM (BRAMs), which utilizes more area and power on FPGA. In this manuscript, the techniques to increase the read ports for multi-ported memory modules are designed using the bank division with XOR (BDX) approach. The read port techniques like two read-one write (2R1W) memory, hybrid mode approach either 2R1W or 4R memory, and hierarchical BDX (HBDX) Approach using 2R1W/4R memory are designed on FPGA platform. The Proposed work utilizes only slices and look-up table (LUT's) rather than BRAMs while designing the memory modules on FPGA, which reduces the computational complexity and improves the system performance. The experimental results are analyzed on Artix-7 FPGA. The performance parameters like slices, LUT utilization, maximum frequency (Fmax), and hardware efficiency are analyzed by concerning different memory depths. The 4R1W memory design using the HBDX approach utilizes 4% slices and works at 449.697 MHz operating frequency on Artix-7 FPGA. The proposed work provides a better platform to choose the proper read port technique to design an efficient modular multiport memory architecture.</span>

Fibre Architecture: A Soft Simultaneity Design Practice

This paper sets out the investigation and methodological learnings of an ongoing collaborative research practice situated between architecture and textile design to show a new practice that is a fusion of the disciplines rather than a parallel set of practices. Applying textile materials to architectural form is challenging in its complexity, requiring an understanding and empathy with the textile material and technique to determine its material behaviour and structural form at an architectural scale. There is a simultaneity that happening collectively between the disciplines to ensure the success in design, fabrication and assembly. This means that structure, form, and material are considered at the same time by both disciplines. In response to these challenges, we present ‘soft simultaneity’ as a methodological approach, where the design programme – design concept, fabrication and assembly – are perceived and effectively developed simultaneously from the different vantage points of each discipline’s knowledge. Each disciplines’ contribution to the collaboration is relative to the other. While each simultaneously perceive the same event (design actions), they do so from their different frame of reference, to feedforward and feedback into the emergent design in different ways. This brings a certain elasticity to the process of the design programme. It enables the coming together of diverse knowledge sets, divergent processes, of the whole and the particular, and to accommodate differences in scale, through advanced digital architectural processes and detailed physical textile design sampling. While the textile material provides the latent potentiality for form finding and creativity, it is soft simultaneity that enables the nature of these materials, their behaviours and interactions to be revealed and realised. We identify and discuss this approach, in the context of a series of projects, and offer this as a useful example of a material-led design strategy for dealing with the complexity of interdisciplinary research.

Oscillating wire cutting and robotic assembly of bespoke acoustic tile systems

New methods of manufacturing and assembly, enabled through robotic fabrication, push the boundaries of the conventional in architecture and construction, when coupled with advanced digital design and simulation. This paper presents a novel method for digital production of bespoke ceramic assemblies for spatial acoustic modulation, demonstrating a hybrid robotic process combining robotic oscillating wire cutting (ROWC) of wet clay bricks and adaptive pick and place (APnP) production of bespoke brick panel assemblies. These processes are carried out within the framework of a deployable robot cell that can be shipped to a jobsite where complex fabrication and assembly can be performed in situ. The research bridges the gap between serialized and bespoke production of architectural elements, by minimally disrupting existing production chains as a viable way forward to integrate digital technologies into existing manufacturing and construction processes. The proposed methods are demonstrated through a collaboration with brick producer Strojer Tegl leading to the manufacturing and assembly of a full-scale acoustic demonstrator of 9 × 4 m, comprises 2200 bricks with 14 shape variants.

Design, simulation and robotic assembly of reversible timber structures

Wood is more and more seen as a sustainable solution to offset carbon emissions from constructions. In response and in parallel to this, the research in robotic timber construction is evolving rapidly, pushed by Industry 4.0 technologies and the integration of digital and physical robotic assets. This paper presents an approach for the design and assembly automation of layered timber structures, with the use of a flexible cell based on collaborative robots. Advanced assembly procedures and digital design of non-standard timber structures are here established and integrated. The automation process is here enhanced by the (1) use of feedback systems based on the location and force signals, (2) the introduction of a flexible robot setup with automatic screwing, and (3) human-collaboration to provide immediate assistance to the robot in the case the signals do not match the defined assembly conditions. The paper discusses the development and use of a Cyber-Physical System to govern the entire construction process, including reflections on the integrated approach to the design, modelling and simulation of the process.

Design and assembly automation of the Robotic Reversible Timber Beam

The field of architecture is more and more referring to wood as a sustainable solution for satisfying the need of new buildings while offsetting carbon emissions. In parallel, the research in Robotic Timber Construction (RTC) has evolved rapidly, focusing both on fabrication and assembly processes in order to improve the productivity of the construction industry and extend the production digital chain. This paper presents an original workflow for the automation from design to layered robotic assembly of reversible timber structures, aided by human-robot collaboration. An advanced digital design workflow for non-standard timber structures is established, shifting the focus towards the assembly of a kit of discrete wood elements into larger configurations that can be reconfigured in time. Linked to this, collaborative robots are employed for grasping, positioning and fixing of discrete timber elements, with the introduction of a multi-phase end effector that connects wood elements through reversible joinery. As such, the work introduces fundamental design and manufacturing concepts for an automated construction process that extends the material life cycle of wood, and consequently, its carbon store. The enhancement of robotic assembly is here achieved with the (1) integration of a feedback system based on location and force signals, and (2) human collaboration to provide immediate assistance to the robot in the case the signals do not match the defined assembly conditions. The various developments are applied to a research demonstrator which crystallizes the various design, constructional, and manufacturing inputs into a physical output, which is discussed from multiple viewpoints, in order to delineate relevant areas for future studies.

Developing an Integrated VR Infrastructure in Architectural Design Education.

With the advent of computer technology, Virtual Reality (VR) became an integral part of design studios in architecture education. Researchers have been exploring how VR-enhanced design studios can be assessed from a student-centered perspective. This paper illustrates the role of teaching architectural design for developing a novel and contextual curriculum based on an analysis of student feedback. The background focuses on the development of VR-based architectural design education. The methodology frames two digital design ecosystems which are experimented in four undergraduate courses. With an ecosystem-based approach discussed in this paper, a medium-oriented and a content-oriented curriculum are offered for testing students' reaction to teaching design in VR. In both ecosystems, students are engaged with advanced digital design methods and techniques, which include 3D form-finding, building information modeling, visual programming, coding, and real-time rendering. The study screens the usage of software solutions for the creation of complex virtual environments, covering Blender, Rhinoceros, Unity, Grasshopper, and Revit. The implementation of a User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) comparatively demonstrates the performative qualities of both digital design ecosystems. Results indicate that the intensity of interaction varied in two incomparable, but connate, levels of qualities. The findings suggest that the perspicuity aspects of student interaction bare the risk of “complicated” and “confusing” software. The results further demonstrate a conflict between task-related qualities and non-task related qualities. Additionally, interacting with VR tools in architecture design education is found attractive, stimulating, and original despite low scores on the pragmatic qualities of perspicuity, efficiency, and dependability. The data and results obtained from this study give insight into the planning of design studios in architecture education based on the use of VR and digital methods. Therefore, this study contributes to future research in the contextualization of the design teaching efforts.

Cognitive impact of virtual reality sketching on designers’ concept generation

ABSTRACT This study focuses on identifying the cognitive impact of virtual reality (VR) sketching on the concept generation phase of the design process. For an empirical study to analyse the cognitive influence of VR sketching, we conducted a pilot study for empirical research based on the protocol analysis of designers’ cognitive activities in VR sketching and compared the results with those of traditional sketching. Spatial inspection was a key behavioural factor of VR sketching when considering its high-frequency repetitive and continuous interactions with a designer's representation activities throughout the concept generation process. The cognitive impact of VR sketching revealed the following decisive features: extension of solution space, enhancement of idea transformation and inducement to a holistic design approach for concept generation. These findings provide insight for understanding the cognitive role of advanced digital design tools for future design research.

Assessing the Impact of Reflective Activities in Digital and Analog Electronics Courses

Contribution: This paper demonstrates positive outcomes from reflection-on-action by engineering students, including meaningful insights on their performance, professional and academic practices, and design knowledge as well as promising preliminary exam results. Background: Literature from the engineering education community underlines the benefits of reflection-based upon theories, such as Experiential Learning Theory, and calls for additional use of reflection in engineering education and associated scholarly work. Intended Outcomes: The authors intended for students to obtain meaningful academic and professional insights with implications for their future performance and to perform better on subsequent related exams via reflection. Application Design: Post-quiz and post-design reflective exercises were implemented in two electrical and computer engineering courses, Microelectronic Circuits and Advanced Digital Design, to drive student analysis of differences between their designs or calculations and the “standard solution” using simulation software and question prompts. Reflection-on-action was chosen to enhance students’ post-activity understanding and insight, as ultimate learning requires reflection whereby students identify errors and strategies for improvement. Findings: Results demonstrated the value of reflection-on-action using post-activity comparisons and simulation. The students’ reflective content and interviews demonstrated substantial professional and academic insights from and appreciation for reflection. On the Microelectronics final exam, a medium effect was associated with the reflection, and for the Digital Design exam, the effect was small to medium. Differences in depth levels of the students’ reflections associated with the two types of problems (quiz questions versus design) were evident, suggesting problem type may impact depth.

The CSD Drug Subset: The Changing Chemistry and Crystallography of Small Molecule Pharmaceuticals

We report the generation and statistical analysis of the CSD drug subset: a subset of the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) consisting of every published small-molecule crystal structure containing an approved drug molecule. By making use of InChI matching, a CSD Python API workflow to link CSD entries to the online database Drugbank.ca has been produced. This has resulted in a subset of 8632 crystal structures, representing all published solid forms of 785 unique drug molecules. We hope that this new resource will lead to improvements in targeted cheminformatics and statistical model building in a pharmaceutical setting. In addition to this, as part of the Advanced Digital Design of Pharmaceutical Therapeutics collaboration between academia and industry, we have been given the unique opportunity to run comparative analysis on the internal crystal structure databases of AstraZeneca and Pfizer, alongside comparison to the CSD as a whole.

Controlling Radiation Beams by Low-Profile Planar Antenna Arrays with Coding Elements.

Beam diversity enables antenna arrays to play important roles in radar, communications, imaging, and next-generation wireless systems. However, achieving flexible control of beams in a low-cost way is still very challenging. Here, we propose low-profile planar antenna arrays with coding elements to control and engineer radiation patterns more freely and flexibly. The proposed planar antenna array consists of binary radiating elements which are characterized by digital codes “0” and “1”. By designing spatial coding patterns of the radiating elements, multifarious functionalities can be well realized, such as beam splitting, beam scanning, and beam deflection. More importantly, coding metasurfaces can be properly arranged around the digital radiating elements to reduce the radar cross section of the antenna, while the radiation performance is well preserved. The low-profile, high-gain, lightweight digital antenna arrays are verified numerically and experimentally in the microwave band. The proposed digital coding planar antenna arrays derive a new paradigm to control the radiation patterns in low-overhead and advanced digital design fashions and offer promising applications in multitasked and intelligent antenna devices and new information systems.

Schottky‐barrier graphene nanoribbon field‐effect transistors‐based field‐programmable gate array's configurable logic block and routing switch

Configurable electronic devices have been developed to provide more flexibility in the advanced digital system design, which needs more device density and there by relies on device scaling. Besides, International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductor (ITRS) has predicted scaling limitation for conventional silicon (Si)‐based devices. Researches on post‐Si materials have proved that carbon could be one of the material which can replaced with Si. Owing to exceptional properties of graphene, designs with graphene‐based devices can replace with Si based ones. This study proposes design and characterisation of graphene‐based simple field‐programmable gate array as a platform of configurable logic structure for future developments. This study focuses on design and characterisation of configurable logic block (CLB), flip‐flop as internal sequential logic devices in CLB, and routing switch, which are designed using graphene nanoribbon field‐effect transistor (GNRFET). The results indicate that proposed CLB is much faster than Si based one and power–delay product of proposed sequential element is much lesser than its counterpart in Si‐based technology. In addition, the proposed GNRFET‐based routing switch requires minimum count of 6 transistors to provide desirable functionality. Foreseeing the feasibility of architecture, this study suggests the possible layout of the proposed logic elements needed for CLB.

An efficient and cost effective FPGA based implementation of the Viola-Jones face detection algorithm

Abstract We present an field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) based implementation of the popular Viola-Jones face detection algorithm, which is an essential building block in many applications such as video surveillance and tracking. Our implementation is a complete system level hardware design described in a hardware description language and validated on the affordable DE2-115 evaluation board. Our primary objective is to study the achievable performance with a low-end FPGA chip based implementation. In addition, we release to the public domain the entire project. We hope that this will enable other researchers to easily replicate and compare their results to ours and that it will encourage and facilitate further research and educational ideas in the areas of image processing, computer vision, and advanced digital design and FPGA prototyping.

Open Source Digital Camera on Field Programmable Gate Arrays

We present an open source digital camera implemented on a field programmable gate array (FPGA). The camera functionality is completely described in VHDL and tested on the DE2-115 educational FPGA board. Some of the current features of the camera include video mode at 30 fps, storage of taken snapshots into SDRAM memories, and grayscale and edge detection filters. The main contributions of this project include 1) the actual system level design of the camera, tested and verified on an actual FPGA chip, and 2) the public release of the entire implementation including source code and documentation. While the proposed camera is far from being able to compete with commercial offerings, it can serve as a framework to test new research ideas related to digital camera systems, image processing, computer vision, etc., as well as an educational platform for advanced digital design with VHDL and FPGAs. As examples of that, we report two spin-off projects developed on top of or starting from the presented digital camera system.

Fetal ECG Extraction from Multichannel Abdominal ECG Recordings for Health Monitoring During Labor

Extracting clean fetal electrocardiogram (fECG) signals from non-invasive abdominal ECG recordings for monitoring the health of the fetus during pregnancy and labor remains a big challenge. The proposed system for facing extraction, processing and morphological feature estimation was implemented in LabVIEW 2013 with preinstalled Biosignal Filtering, Advanced Signal Processing and Digital Filter Design Toolboxes. The present approach is based on the using of FastICA algorithm for fECG extraction. In order to improve fECG extraction performance, it was applied here a combination of Undecimated Wavelet Transform (UWT) and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) – Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) algorithm as post-processing tool. Fetal ECG morphological indicators like heart rate, T/QRS ratio and QT interval could be estimated from fECG post-processed signals of two patients and some considerations regarding to the fetal stress during labor could be made in these two cases.

Robotic timber construction — Expanding additive fabrication to new dimensions

Abstract This paper presents a novel approach to non-standard timber assembly – Robotic Timber Construction (RTC) – where robotic fabrication is used to expand additive digital fabrication techniques towards industrial full scale dimensions. Featuring robotic systems that grasp, manipulate, and finally position building components according to a precise digital blueprint, RTC combines robotic assembly procedures and advanced digital design of non-standard timber structures. The resulting architectural morphologies allow for a convergence of aesthetic and functional concerns, enabling structural optimisation through the locally differentiated aggregation of material. Initiated by the group of Gramazio Kohler Research at ETH Zurich, this approach offers a new perspective on automated timber construction, where the focus is shifted from the processing of single parts towards the assembly of generic members in space. As such, RTC promotes unique advantages over conventional approaches to timber construction, such as, for example, CNC joinery and cutting: through the automated placement of material exactly where it is needed, RTC combines additive and largely waste-free construction with economic assembly procedures, it does not require additional external building reference, and it offers digital control across the entire building process, even when the design and assembly information are highly complex. This paper considers 1) research parameters for the individual components of RTC (such as computational design processes, construction methods and fabrication strategies), and 2) the architectural implications of integrating these components into a systemic, unifying process at the earliest stages of design. Overall, RTC leads to profound changes in the design, performance and expressive language of architecture and thus fosters the creation of architecture that profoundly reinvents its constructive repertoire.

Performance-based parametric design explorations: A method for generating appropriate building components

Performance-based parametric design explorations depend on formulating custom-designed workflows that require reading, writing, interpreting and manipulating databases, as part of the design process. The possibilities of customization and parameterization offered by the user-friendly interfaces of advanced building-performance simulation software and digital design tools have now enabled architects to carry out performance-based design explorations without the help of simulation experts. This paper presents a customized workflow methodology to explore design alternatives for producing shading devices that can optimize daylight, while blocking out excessive solar heat gains, in an office building in a hot and humid climate. The design alternatives were generated by evolutionary algorithms in accordance with daylight performance requirements and simulated to assess their shading and daylight efficiencies.