Working Notes from the 1992 AAAI Workshop on Automating Software Design. Theme: Domain Specific Software Design

The goal of this workshop is to identify different architectural approaches to building domain-specific software design systems and to explore issues unique to domain-specific (vs. general-purpose) software design. Some general issues that cut across the particular software design domain include: (1) knowledge representation, acquisition, and maintenance; (2) specialized software design techniques; and (3) user interaction and user interface

Computer aided inspection procedures to support smart manufacturing of injection moulded components

This work presents Reverse Engineering and Computer Aided technologies to improve the inspection of injection moulded electro-mechanical parts. Through a strong integration and automation of these methods, tolerance analysis, acquisition tool-path optimization and data management are performed. The core of the procedure concerns the automation of the data measure originally developed through voxel-based segmentation. This paper discusses the overall framework and its integration made according to Smart Manufacturing requirements. The experimental set-up, now in operative conditions at ABB SACE, is composed of a laser scanner installed on a CMM machine able to measure components with lengths in the range of 5÷250 mm, (b) a tool path optimization procedure and (c) a data management both developed as CAD-based applications

Automated sequence and motion planning for robotic spatial extrusion of 3D trusses

While robotic spatial extrusion has demonstrated a new and efficient means to fabricate 3D truss structures in architectural scale, a major challenge remains in automatically planning extrusion sequence and robotic motion for trusses with unconstrained topologies. This paper presents the first attempt in the field to rigorously formulate the extrusion sequence and motion planning (SAMP) problem, using a CSP encoding. Furthermore, this research proposes a new hierarchical planning framework to solve the extrusion SAMP problems that usually have a long planning horizon and 3D configuration complexity. By decoupling sequence and motion planning, the planning framework is able to efficiently solve the extrusion sequence, end-effector poses, joint configurations, and transition trajectories for spatial trusses with nonstandard topologies. This paper also presents the first detailed computation data to reveal the runtime bottleneck on solving SAMP problems, which provides insight and comparing baseline for future algorithmic development. Together with the algorithmic results, this paper also presents an open-source and modularized software implementation called Choreo that is machine-agnostic. To demonstrate the power of this algorithmic framework, three case studies, including real fabrication and simulation results, are presented.Comment: 24 pages, 16 figure

Model-based user interface testing with Spec Explorer and ConcurTaskTrees

Analytic usability analysis methods have been proposed as an alternative to user testing in early phases of development due to the cost of the latter approach. By working with models of the systems, analytic models are not capable of identifying implementation related problems that might have an impact on usability. Model-based testing enables the testing of an implemented software artefact against a model of what it should be (the oracle). In the case of model-based user interface testing, the models should be expressed at an adequate level of abstraction, adequately modelling the interaction process. This paper describes an effort to develop tool support enabling the use of task models as oracles for model-based testing of user interfaces.FCT -Fuel Cell Technologies Program(POSC/EIA/56646/2004

Knowledge engineering techniques for automated planning

Formulating knowledge for use in AI Planning engines is currently some-thing of an ad-hoc process, where the skills of knowledge engineers and the tools they use may significantly influence the quality of the resulting planning application. There is little in the way of guidelines or standard procedures, however, for knowledge engineers to use when formulating knowledge into planning domain languages such as PDDL. Also, there is little published research to inform engineers on which method and tools to use in order to effectively engineer a new planning domain model. This is of growing importance, as domain independent planning engines are now being used in a wide range of applications, with the consequence that op-erational problem encodings and domain models have to be developed in a standard language. In particular, at the difficult stage of domain knowledge formulation, changing a statement of the requirements into something for-mal - a PDDL domain model - is still somewhat of an ad hoc process, usually conducted by a team of AI experts using text editors. On the other hand, the use of tools such as itSIMPLE or GIPO, with which experts gen-erate a high level diagrammatic description and automatically generate the domain model, have not yet been proven to be more effective than hand coding. The major contribution of this thesis is the evaluation of knowledge en-gineering tools and techniques involved in the formulation of knowledge. To support this, we introduce and encode a new planning domain called Road Traffic Accidents (RTA), and discuss a set of requirements that we have derived, in consultation with stakeholders and analysis of accident management manuals, for the planning part of the management task. We then use and evaluate three separate strategies for knowledge formulation, encoding domain models from a textual, structural description of require-ments using (i) the traditional method of a PDDL expert and text editor (ii) a leading planning GUI with built in UML modelling tools (iii) an object-based notation inspired by formal methods. We evaluate these three ap-proaches using process and product metrics. The results give insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches, highlight lessons learned regarding knowledge encoding, and point to important lines of research for knowledge engineering for planning. In addition, we discuss a range of state-of-the-art modelling tools to find the types of features that the knowledge engineering tools possess. These features have also been used for evaluating the methods used. We bench-mark our evaluation approach by comparing it with the method used in the previous International Competition for Knowledge Engineering for Plan-ning & Scheduling (ICKEPS). We conclude by providing a set of guide-lines for building future knowledge engineering tools

A NASA-wide approach toward cost-effective, high-quality software through reuse

NASA Langley Research Center sponsored the second Workshop on NASA Research in Software Reuse on May 5-6, 1992 at the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The workshop was hosted by the Research Triangle Institute. Participants came from the three NASA centers, four NASA contractor companies, two research institutes and the Air Force's Rome Laboratory. The purpose of the workshop was to exchange information on software reuse tool development, particularly with respect to tool needs, requirements, and effectiveness. The participants presented the software reuse activities and tools being developed and used by their individual centers and programs. These programs address a wide range of reuse issues. The group also developed a mission and goals for software reuse within NASA. This publication summarizes the presentations and the issues discussed during the workshop