Computational Support of Synthesis and Analysis of Behaviour of Artefacts Using Physical Effects: Some Challenges

Many researchers stressed the importance of physical effects in the synthesis and analysis of artefacts. Murakoshi and Taura [1998] feel that synthesising artefacts directly from physical effects is hard since effects have been created and described by scientists primarily for explanation of phenomena rather than for synthesising artefacts that embody these phenomena – and synthesis using them requires more than straightforward application. Therefore, in the current form, effect representations are ill-equipped in aiding synthesis in a substantial way. However, a detailed study, of why this should be the case and to what extent we could support analysis and synthesis directly using physical effects, is yet to be carried out. In analysis, visualisation of qualitative state changes using a structural level of artefact description is possible using ‘envisionment’[de Kleer and Brown, 1984; Forbus, 1984; Kuipers, 1986]. These, however, do not deal much with the functionality (or intended, higher level behaviour) of artefacts, which must also be part of analysis. Also, the description used in qualitative reasoning is far less detailed than that which an artefact description must be at in order to be implementable – a requirement of the design process. The goal of this work is to support behavioural analysis and synthesis of artefacts directly using physical effects.We ask two broad questions: · Why is it hard to design or explain directly using physical effects? · Given this, what can still be done in terms of supporting the above activities?