The proposed research by this newly-funded Presidential Young Investigator will explore the automation of decision-making for engineering design and manufacturing tasks, at a level above that of the conventional computer-based automation of Numerically Controlled (NC) machines and robots. The main goal is to achieve a computer environment in which engineers can acquire, represent, and utilize domain knowledge in their decision-making processes. This will involve research in integrating different types of problem-solving methods, modeling approaches, and domain knowledge. The resulting computer-aided engineering environment will encompass deterministic, observational, and heuristic knowledge, and should support engineers in both the analysis and synthesis aspects of decision-making. The research activities will be conducted in close cooperation with industry sponsors, and will include creation of an intelligent decision-making framework, development of a cooperative decision-making paradigm, and investigation of fundamental links between decisions and actions. Funding will be shared with the Computational Engineering Program, which is interested in the aspect of the research addressing parallel computations.
