Abstract
An inventor who is skilled at constructing innovative designs is distinguished, not just by the first principles he knows, but by the way he uses these principles and how he focusses the search for novel devices among an overwhelming space of possibilities. We propose that an appropriate focus for design is the network of qualitative interactions between quantities, (called an interaction topology), used by a device to achieve its desired behavior. We present an approach, called interaction-based invention, which views design as a process of building interaction topologies — in this paper directly from first principles. The program Ibis, which embodies this approach, designs simple hydro-mechanical regulators, analogous to devices that were fundamental to the development of feedback control theory.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
10 References
Bobrow, D. G. (Ed.) [1984], “Special Issue on Qualitative Reasoning,” AIJ, 24.
Bose, A. G., and K. N. Stevens [1965], Introductory Network Theory, Harper & Row, NY.
Brachman, R. J., and J. G. Schmolze [1985], “An Overview of KL-ONE,” CogSci, 9
Brown, D., and B. Chandrasekaran [1985], “Expert Systems for a Class of Mechanical Design Activity,” in J. Gero (ed.), Knowledge Engineering in Computer-aided Design, North Holland, Amsterdam.
Hill, F. J., and G. R. Peterson [1974], Introduction to Switching Theory and Logical Design, Wiley, New York.
Joskowicz, L., and S. Addanki [1989], “Innovative Design of Kinematic Pairs,” Report RC14507, IBM T.J.Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y.
Mayr, O. [1970], The Origins of Feedback Control, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
McDermott, D. [1977], “Flexibility and Efficiency in a Computer Program for Designing Circuits,” MIT AITR-402.
McDermott, J. [1982], “R1: A Rule-based Configurer of Computer Systems,” AIJ, 19(1).
Mitchell, T. M., et al. [1983], “An Intelligent Aid for Circuit Redesign,” AAAI.
Mitchell, T. M., S. Mahadevan, and L. I. Steinberg [1985], “LEAP: A Learning Apprentice for VLSI Design,” IJCAI.
Mittal, S., et al. [1986], “PRIDE: An Expert System for the Design of Paper Handling Systems,” Computer.
Murthy, S. S., and S. Addanki [1987], “PROMPT: An Innovative Design Tool,” AAAI.
Ressler, A. [1984], “A Circuit Grammar for Operational Amplifier Design,” MIT AITR-807.
Roylance, G. [1980], “A Simple Model of Circuit Design,” MIT AITR-703.
Shearer et al. [1971], Introduction to System Dynamics, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.
Ulrich, K. [1988], “Computation and Pre-Parametric Design,” MITAI TR-1043.
Williams, B. C. [1984], “Qualitative Analysis of MOS Circuits,” AIJ, 24, pages 281–346.
Williams, B. C. [1986], “Doing Time: Putting Qualitative Reasoning on Firmer Ground,” AAAI.
Williams, B. C. [1988], “MINIMA: A Symbolic Approach to Qualitative Reasoning,” AAAI.
Williams, B. C. [1989], “Invention from First Principles via Topologies of Interaction,” PhD Thesis, MIT.
Williams, B. C. [1990], “Invention from First Principles: An Overview,” P. Winston and S. Shellard (Eds.), Artificial Intelligence at MIT: Expanding Frontiers, MIT Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Williams, B.C. (1990). Interaction-based invention: Designing novel devices from first principles. In: Gottlob, G., Nejdl, W. (eds) Expert Systems in Engineering Principles and Applications. ESE 1990. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 462. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-53104-1_37
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-53104-1_37
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-53104-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46711-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive