Affiliations: Distributed Systems and Modelling Research Group,
School of Mathematical and Information Sciences, Coventry University, UK | Technology Faculty, Southampton Institute,
Southampton, UK | Engineering Design Centre, University of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
Abstract: In a complex engineering design, multiple engineering design teams
are required to work cooperatively in order to design a single product. However
multiple disciplinary teams in different departments and companies often use
different systems with different modelling methods and techniques. While the
parallelism of this approach can reduce the design life cycle, the complexity
of the optimisation problem can lead to difficulties. Agent technology can
alleviate some of the difficulties of concurrent design. In this paper, we
present an architecture in which agent technology is used to model interactions
between design systems, and thereby enable design agents from various design
disciplines to explore the design problem and solution space. We also introduce
a multiple-evolutionary approach with an automated negotiation mechanism to
enable agents to exchange design solutions and to reach an agreed optimised
solution for a global design problem.
