Knowledge Transfer in Automatic Optimisation of Reconfigurable Designs

This paper presents a novel approach for automatic optimisation of reconfigurable design parameters based on knowledge transfer. The key idea is to make use of insights derived from optimising related designs to benefit future optimisations. We show how to use designs targeting one device to speed up optimisation of another device. The proposed approach is evaluated based on various applications including computational finance and seismic imaging. It is capable of achieving up to 35% reduction in optimisation time in producing designs with similar performance, compared to alternative optimisation methods

Computational design exploration of a segmented concrete shell building floor system

The construction industry is responsible for nearly half of the UK's carbon dioxide emissions and the use of an extremely large volume of concrete – the world's most widely used man-made material – accounts for more than 7% of global carbon dioxide emissions. The scale of this problem spawned research to explore the potential for structurally efficient non-prismatic geometries to reduce the amount of concrete used in building elements substantially, thus also reducing their embodied carbon dioxide footprint. In particular, the research focused on segmented thin concrete shells as floor slabs, leveraging computational design and digital fabrication methodologies to automate their production off site. An important part of this research was the development of a computational framework for the design of thin concrete shells in order to make such a construction methodology accessible to building designers in practice. The framework combines solutions for parametric modelling, finite-element analysis, isogeometric analysis, form-finding and optimisation, along with embedded fabrication constraints specific to the project's automated manufacturing system. The application of the developed computational framework in the design of a 4.5 m × 4.5 m prototype is documented in this paper, illustrating how automating concrete construction can transform the industry towards net-zero

Product, process and resource model coupling for knowledge-driven assembly automation

: Accommodating frequent product changes in a short period of time is a challenging task due to limitations of the contemporary engineering approach to design, build and reconfigure automation systems. In particular, the growing quantity and diversity of manufacturing information, and the increasing need to exchange and reuse this information in an efficient way has become a bottleneck. To improve the engineering process, digital manufacturing and Product, Process and Resource (PPR) modelling are considered very promising to compress development time and engineering cost by enabling efficient design and reconfiguration of manufacturing resources. However, due to ineffective coupling of PPR data, design and reconfiguration of assembly systems are still challenging tasks due to the dependency on the knowledge and experience of engineers. This paper presents an approach for data models integration that can be employed for coupling the PPR domain models for matching the requirements of products for assembly automation. The approach presented in this paper can be used effectively to link data models from various engineering domains and engineering tools. For proof of concept, an example implementation of the approach for modelling and integration of PPR for a Festo test rig is presented as a case study

Design synthesis for dynamically reconfigurable logic systems

Dynamic reconfiguration of logic circuits has been a research problem for over four decades. While applications using logic reconfiguration in practical scenarios have been demonstrated, the design of these systems has proved to be a difficult process demanding the skills of an experienced reconfigurable logic design expert. This thesis proposes an automatic synthesis method which relieves designers of some of the difficulties associated with designing partially dynamically reconfigurable systems. A new design abstraction model for reconfigurable systems is proposed in order to support design exploration using the presented method. Given an input behavioural model, a technology server and a set of design constraints, the method will generate a reconfigurable design solution in the form of a 3D floorplan and a configuration schedule. The approach makes use of genetic algorithms. It facilitates global optimisation to accommodate multiple design objectives common in reconfigurable system design, while making realistic estimates of configuration overheads and of the potential for resource sharing between configurations. A set of custom evolutionary operators has been developed to cope with a multiple-objective search space. Furthermore, the application of a simulation technique verifying the lll results of such an automatic exploration is outlined in the thesis. The qualities of the proposed method are evaluated using a set of benchmark designs taking data from a real reconfigurable logic technology. Finally, some extensions to the proposed method and possible research directions are discussed

Special Session on Industry 4.0

No abstract available

Optimising and evaluating designs for reconfigurable hardware

Growing demand for computational performance, and the rising cost for chip design and manufacturing make reconfigurable hardware increasingly attractive for digital system implementation. Reconfigurable hardware, such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), can deliver performance through parallelism while also providing flexibility to enable application builders to reconfigure them. However, reconfigurable systems, particularly those involving run-time reconfiguration, are often developed in an ad-hoc manner. Such an approach usually results in low designer productivity and can lead to inefficient designs. This thesis covers three main achievements that address this situation. The first achievement is a model that captures design parameters of reconfigurable hardware and performance parameters of a given application domain. This model supports optimisations for several design metrics such as performance, area, and power consumption. The second achievement is a technique that enhances the relocatability of bitstreams for reconfigurable devices, taking into account heterogeneous resources. This method increases the flexibility of modules represented by these bitstreams while reducing configuration storage size and design compilation time. The third achievement is a technique to characterise the power consumption of FPGAs in different activity modes. This technique includes the evaluation of standby power and dedicated low-power modes, which are crucial in meeting the requirements for battery-based mobile devices

Computational design exploration of a segmented concrete shell building floor system

The construction industry is responsible for nearly half of the UK's carbon emissions, and the use of an extremely large volume of concrete, the world's most widely used man-made material, accounts for more than 7% of global CO2 emissions. The scale of this problem spawned research that explored the potential for structurally efficient non-prismatic geometries to substantially reduce the amount of concrete in building elements, thus also reducing their embodied carbon footprint. In particular, the research focused on segmented thin concrete shells as floor slabs, leveraging computational design and digital fabrication methodologies to automate their production off-site. An important part of this research was the development of a computational framework for the design of thin concrete shells, to make such construction methodology accessible to building designers in practice. The framework combined solutions for parametric modelling, finite element analysis, isogeometric analysis, form finding and optimisation, and also embedded fabrication constraints specific to the project's automated manufacturing system. This paper documents the application of the developed computational framework in the design of a 4.5m x 4.5m prototype, illustrating how automating concrete construction can transform the industry towards net-zero

Customisable arithmetic hardware designs

Imperial Users onl