DEKAS - An evolutionary case-based reasoning system to support protection scheme design

This paper describes a decision support system being developed in conjunction with two UK utility companies to aid the design of electrical power transmission protection systems. A brief overview of the application domain is provided, followed by a description of the work carried out to date concerning the development and deployment of the Design Engineering Knowledge Application System (DEKAS). The paper then discusses the provision of intelligent decision support to the design engineer through the application of case-based reasoning (CBR). The key benefits from this will be outlined in conjunction with a relevant case study

On the design of state-of-the-art pseudorandom number generators by means of genetic programming

Congress on Evolutionary Computation. Portland, EEUU, 19-23 June 2004The design of pseudorandom number generators by means of evolutionary computation is a classical problem. Today, it has been mostly and better accomplished by means of cellular automata and not many proposals, inside or outside this paradigm could claim to be both robust (passing all the statistical tests, including the most demanding ones) and fast, as is the case of the proposal we present here. Furthermore, for obtaining these generators, we use a radical approach, where our fitness function is not at all based in any measure of randomness, as is frequently the case in the literature, but of nonlinearity. Efficiency is assured by using only very efficient operators (both in hardware and software) and by limiting the number of terminals in the genetic programming implementation

A case study of intuition and design: Building a tool for parents of premature babies and the nursing staff who care for them

The paper presents a research-based study project conveyed by Media Lab Helsinki in 2007–2008. During the process, the design team constructed a unique audiovisual tool that provides emotional support in coping with the challenges of a premature birth. The purpose of the two-hour DVD, with its three separate parts, is to help family, intensive care staff, and other associated health care personnel to better connect with each other and the tiny babies. As the first audiovisual material, which aims to explain premature babies’ communication and interaction, the end product has proven to be of significant value to Finnish neonatal care and other associated fields. The project was realized in cooperation with the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Children’s Hospital, HUCH (Helsinki University Central Hospital), and the design team worked in a network of shared expertise. In the case study the authors used co-design and self-reflection methods to monitor graduate students working with a society-level challenge. The focus was upon the utilisation of intuition in innovations, problem solving, and project management. During the design process, the authors observed the working theory: intuition is the basis of successful decision-making, which leads to innovative solutions. Throughout the design process, the team collected systematically feedback, which was later utilised as a corner stone in the case study. The authors believe that relying on intuition, the design team ended up addressing many hidden issues of the clinic and parenthood of premature babies’. This paper tries to unfold the evolutionary working approach used during the design process, presents highlights of the case study research as well as illuminates the intuitive way of working from designers’ point of view. Keywords: Design; Intuition; Case Study; Shared Expertise; Innovations; Digital Media; Evolutionary Process</p

Expect the unexpected: the co-construction of assistive artifacts

This paper aims to explain emerging design activities within community-based rehabilitation contexts through the science of self-organization and adaptivity. It applies an evolutionary systematic worldview (Heylighen, 2011) to frame spontaneous collaboration between different local agents which produce self-made assistive artifacts. Through a process of distinction creation and distinction destruction occupational therapist, professional non-designers, caregivers and disabled people co-evolve simultaneously towards novel possibilities which embody a contemporary state of fitness. The conversation language is build on the principles of emotional seeding through stigmergic prototyping and have been practically applied as a form of design hacking which blends design time and use time. Within this process of co-construction the thought experiment of Maxwell’s Demon is used to map perceived behavior and steer the selecting process of following user-product adaptation strategies. This practice-based approach is illustrated through a case study and tries to integrate both rationality and intuition within emerging participatory design activities

Formulating the cognitive design problem of air traffic management

Evolutionary approaches to cognitive design in the air traffic management (ATM) system can be attributed with a history of delayed developments. This issue is well illustrated in the case of the flight progress strip where attempts to design a computer-based system to replace the paper strip have consistently been met with rejection. An alternative approach to cognitive design of air traffic management is needed and this paper proposes an approach centred on the formulation of cognitive design problems. The paper gives an account of how a cognitive design problem was formulated for a simulated ATM task performed by controller subjects in the laboratory. The problem is formulated in terms of two complimentary models. First, a model of the ATM domain describes the cognitive task environment of managing the simulated air traffic. Second, a model of the ATM worksystem describes the abstracted cognitive behaviours of the controllers and their tools in performing the traffic management task. Taken together, the models provide a statement of worksystem performance, and express the cognitive design problem for the simulated system. The use of the problem formulation in supporting cognitive design, including the design of computer-based flight strips, is discussed

A design framework for enabling sustainability in the clothing sector

This article discusses general strategies to enable environmental sustainability within the clothing sector, providing a framework for decision makers involved in the development of programs and policies for this sector. It initially revises the environmental impact of the clothing system and determines its key environmental sustainability priorities. The framework involves five evolutionary strategies for enabling sustainable consumption and production: 1) environmental improvement of flows throughout the supply chain; 2) environmental redesign of existing clothes; 3) design of new clothes intrinsically more sustainable; 4) design of cloth-service systems and 5) promoting life styles towards sufficient consumption. The practical implications of each strategy is analysed based on correspondent ex-post-facto case studies identified in Brazil, using data collected through literature review and desktop research

Evolutionary Multiobjective Design in Automotive Development

This paper describes the use of evolutionary algorithms to solve multiobjective optimization problems arising at different stages in the automotive design process. The problems considered are black box optimization scenarios: definitions of the decision space and the design objectives are given, together with a procedure to evaluate any decision alternative with regard to the design objectives, e.g., a simulation model. However, no further information about the objective function is available. In order to provide a practical introduction to the use of multiobjective evolutionary algorithms, this article explores the three following case studies: design space exploration of road trains, parameter optimization of adaptive cruise controllers, and multiobjective system identification. In addition, selected research topics in evolutionary multiobjective optimization will be illustrated along with each case study, highlighting the practical relevance of the theoretical results through real-world application examples. The algorithms used in these studies were implemented based on the PISA (Platform and Programming Language Independent Interface for Search Algorithm) framework. Besides helping to structure the presentation of different algorithms in a coherent way, PISA also reduces the implementation effort considerabl