skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Artificial Intelligence Tools for Better Use of Axiomatic Design
Abstract Axiomatic Design (AD) provides a powerful thinking framework for solving complex engineering problems through the concept of design domains and diligent mapping and decomposition between functional and physical domains. Despite this utility, AD is yet to be implemented for widespread use by design practitioners solving real world problems in industry and exists primarily in the realm of academia. This is due, in part, to a high level of design expertise and familiarity with its methodology required to apply the AD approach effectively. It is difficult to correctly identify, extract, and abstract top-level functional requirements (FRs) based on early-stage design research. Furthermore, guiding early-stage design by striving to maintain functional independence, the first Axiom, is difficult at a systems level without explicit methods of quantifying the relationship between high-level FRs and design parameters (DPs). To address these challenges, Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods, specifically in deep learning (DL) assisted Natural Language Processing (NLP), have been applied to represent design knowledge for machines to understand, and, following AD principles, support the practice of human designers. NLP-based question-answering is demonstrated to automate early-stage identification of FRs and to assist design decomposition by recursively mapping and traversing down along the FR-DP hierarchical structure. Functional coupling analysis could then be conducted with vectorized FRs and DPs from NLP-based language embeddings. This paper presents a framework for how AI can be applied to design based on the principles of AD, which will enable a virtual design assistant system based on both human and machine intelligence.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1854833
PAR ID:
10340895
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering
Volume:
1174
Issue:
1
ISSN:
1757-8981
Page Range / eLocation ID:
012005
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Lu, W.; Anumba, C. (Ed.)
    The digital and integrated representation of the physical and functional characteristics of buildings enabled by building information modeling (BIM) provides a computational environment for automated compliance checking (ACC) of building designs. The integration of natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI) with BIM brings further opportunities for ACC – it can empower BIM with text analytics and AI capabilities, thereby injecting intelligence and automation in the compliance checking processes. This chapter highlights emerging approaches that aim to facilitate and harness the marriage of BIM, NLP, and AI to enable the next generation of automated compliance checking systems (ACC) systems. This chapter (1) reviews different types of BIM-based ACC systems that leverage NLP and AI techniques, (2) discusses how NLP and AI techniques are applied in regulatory text analytics tasks and BIM information analytics tasks in the context of ACC, and (3) discusses the future trends of BIM-based ACC systems. 
    more » « less
  2. It’s critical to understand how to use artificial intelligence (AI) to foster innovation in the modern world as AI becomes more integrated into creative and problem-solving tasks. Using the sustainable washing machine as a primary example, this study designed and developed AI design assistant AIDA as a web-based chatbot to facilitate design ideation, leveraging large language models. AIDA prompts design tasks and assesses user-generated ideas for validity, novelty, and feasibility using RoBERTa-based models. As in the initial phase of an ongoing project, we conducted a human-subject experiment to validate a baseline version of AIDA and examined user performance and perceptions. The participants demonstrated smooth interaction with AIDA and consistent performance. They reported mostly positive perceived usefulness, enjoyment, and trust. Moreover, females and participants equal to or over 25 showed a comparable level of trust for general automated systems and AIDA, whereas male and under 25 participants were more skeptical about AIDA. This research offers a framework for technical development, tailored interactions, and real-time feedback, as well as insights into the use of AI chatbots to mediate engineering design. By analyzing user behavior and survey responses, we identified future directions in designing AI systems in engineering education and early-stage design. 
    more » « less
  3. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) have become increasingly relevant across multiple fields, creating a necessity for young learners to understand these concepts. However, resources enabling learners to apply AI and NLP, particularly in middle school science, remain limited. To address this gap, we present the early development of NLP4Science, an interactive visualization application facilitating the integration of NLP concepts such as sentiment analysis and keyword extraction into middle school science. We adopted an iterative co-design process starting with a professional development workshop with four teachers, followed by a 2-day pilot study with 48 eighth graders, and concluding with a 5-day study involving 50 sixth graders. This poster presents an overview of NLP4Science, highlighting its key features, and sharing insights gained from the iterative design process, demonstrating the potential of NLP4Science to transform AI and NLP learning within middle school science classrooms. 
    more » « less
  4. Present bias—the tendency to favor immediate gains over long-term benefits—can negatively affect design decisions in construction engineering. Designers often prioritize short-term economic gains that compromises the resilience of the asset, leading to increased cost of remediation in the future. This dissertation explores how mental visualization through future thinking and the use of generative AI tools can help reduce present bias during early-stage design tasks. Three experimental conditions were tested: present thinking (control), future thinking, and AI-assisted future thinking. Civil engineering students (n = 90) participated in constraints identification and concept design tasks for a campus redevelopment project, while their verbal responses and brain activity were recorded. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to measure cognitive load. To analyze design narrative, qualitative coding and natural language processing (NLP) techniques such as semantic similarity and text network analysis were used. Results show that future thinking and AI assistance improved the quality and future orientation of design outputs. The AI-assisted group identified more climate-related risks, demonstrated higher alignment with futureproofing concepts, and showed more coherent design narratives. These improvements were achieved with reduced cognitive load. Notably, the influence of AI assistance extended beyond the phase in which it was used and enhanced performance in subsequent design stage. The findings support the role of AI as a cognitive support tool that can enhance design thinking, reduce cognitive load, and lead to more resilient and sustainable design outcomes in construction engineering. 
    more » « less
  5. Dialog systems (e.g., chatbots) have been widely studied, yet related research that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) is constantly evolving. These systems have typically been developed to interact with humans in the form of speech, visual, or text conversation. As humans continue to adopt dialog systems for various objectives, there is a need to involve humans in every facet of the dialog development life cycle for synergistic augmentation of both the humans and the dialog system actors in real-world settings. We provide a holistic literature survey on the recent advancements inhuman-centered dialog systems(HCDS). Specifically, we provide background context surrounding the recent advancements in machine learning-based dialog systems and human-centered AI. We then bridge the gap between the two AI sub-fields and organize the research works on HCDS under three major categories (i.e., Human-Chatbot Collaboration, Human-Chatbot Alignment, Human-Centered Chatbot Design & Governance). In addition, we discuss the applicability and accessibility of the HCDS implementations through benchmark datasets, application scenarios, and downstream NLP tasks. 
    more » « less