Distributed Adaptive Optimization in Virtual Body Assembly

The Digital Body Development System (DBDS) is 4 year project to shorten the time to launch vehicles by improving the launch problem solving process. The project is based on two concepts: virtual functional build and an intelligent agent based decision support system. This paper presents a novel architecture for the decision support system that streamlines the launch process through the integration of a virtual assembly simulation, problem identification, and solution generation and evaluation. Following the virtual functional build process, the architecture deploys a number of multi-agent systems to provide system functionality, such as problem knowledge retrieval, solution generation, modification, and evaluation. The architecture has been implemented and will be explained on a simple 2-D door model and a casebase of 100 cases. Results show that the DBDS can find the correct solution much faster than a random search and can automatically implement and evaluate the solution.