The aesthetics of Industrial Design constantly changes in relation to the evolution of technology. As for the aerodynamics of an automobile, if the angle of a rear window is 30 degrees, then the Co-efficient of drag is the worst and the critical ange. The rear window with 30 degrees angle was considered to be the most beautiful before. However, nowadays we feel the rear window with 15 degrees is much more beautiful than the one with 30 degrees.

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EcoDesign is a method of environmental management that is based on consideration of the whole life cycle of products and/or services at every phase of development and use, from the design process, through the procurement of raw materials, production of the commodity, its use and its final disposal. EcoDesign based on the concept of Ecotechnology proposed by S. Aida in 1972 aims to maximize the lifetime performance of the product and/or service while minimizing its overall environmental impact. However, a more fundamental approach would be to consider EcoDesign in terms of the way in which required functions or services are fulfilled, so that function rather than product becomes the starting point for development and innovation. Consequently, the innovation process considers the system level rather than the product level during the early stages of the EcoDesign process. EcoDesign is a philosophy that aims to develop social systems that have a holistic awareness that humans are linked both materially and spiritually, joining the Christian concept of Spirit/ Mind/ Body to the Shinrabansho*. It is only through the recognition of this link that humanity can succeed in exploiting the planet's resources in an efficient manner with due regarding the needs of future generations. * Japanese word meaning the entire planet and its ecosystems We, Cranfield University Japan Centre, have held EcoDesign/Ecotechnology International Conferences more than 10 times, organized by the Honda Foundation, International AI Foundation. AIES-Adaptive Intelligence Energy Systems- Project and others in cooperation with Cranfield University and EU in Europe, Universities and Institutes in the USA, Asia, Australia and Japan as part of the activity to make the concept more concrete.

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The authors present a Conceptual Design Support System(CDSS). To develop creative products for a short period of time, it is indispensable to support a designer by offering a series of forms. Although TRIZ provides the technique of supporting a way of thinking, it is not enough to support. Because an idea is not produced if a designer's insight is insufficient. In order to solve it, the system has a view of QFD and USIT in addition to TRIZ. Using a system which combines these techniques, it will be possible to clarify problems and to raise designer's insight much more.

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Recently, a concept "universal design" to design products equally usable by diverse users has been becoming important. Although various methods and techniques for universal design have been reported, most pf them are not sufficiently general or systematic. The purpose of this study is to establish effective design methods for universal design based on systematic analysis and comprehension of universal design problem. In the previous papers, the authors prpposed a structure-control apprpach matrix to systematically generate ppssible design ideas to handle user diversity. After generating design ideas, we need to estimate their feasibility, compare them and optimize the candidate considering user diversity. In this paper, the authors indicate that interval arithmetic can be an effective tool to support consideration on user diversity, especially quantitative diversity, in universal design process. Some interval arithmetic calculation is implemented as software and applied to simple universal design problem as an example.

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A computerized method of (a) calculating shape and color features of existing designs from their 3D polygon models, (b) analyzing the designs by representing them as vectors in a feature space, and (c) searching for a distinctive usage of shape and color as a vector furthermost from the existing vectors in the space, is proposed. In this method, a distinctiveness of a design from existing designs is mathematically defined and used for the search process. A searched solution should help a designer to think of a new design distinctive from existing ones to attract consumer attention. The proposed method is implemented as a software and applied to simplified models of nine personal computer designs and seven digital camera designs.

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The modular design is being introduced in order to shorten the product development time and correspond to environmental problems. In this paper, the method of supporting modular design on conceptual design stage is proposed. We defined relationship between the function and arrangement of parts. By using the information of the composition of the product function, qualitative attributes of conceptual entities, and the arrangement rule based on relationship between function and arrangement of parts, the modulation process is supported. We also develop the pilot system for supporting the modular design process with proposed method, and the applicability of the proposal technique was examined.

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Methods for supporting industrial design with special attention paid to the diversity of Kansei were proposed to grasp and respond to the quickly diversifying customers' requirements. As Kansei is very individualistic in nature, a new approach is needed to accommodate the difference from person to person to really reflect the customer's preference in terms of Kansei or his or her personal evaluation Kansei feature. We developed two kinds of methods to tackle this problem. One is such a method, which creates a different Kansei space for each different user, by applying a semantic differential method and a principal component analysis to the impression words. The method helps designer to interpolate customer's recuirement represented by subjective words. The other is Interactive Reduct Evolutional Computation (IREC), which is a commitational method to evolve designs based on a user's personal preferences. The method helps customers to externalize Kansei requirement like aesthetics of a product design so that a designer can capture customer's requirement without using words.

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The idea of utilizing various knowledge is recognized as important thing to survive the global competition. To reuse someknowledge earned from past experience enables them to shorten the time of thinking or reduce making a mistake. It can apply in product development domain. Global competition force product designer to develop new product in very short time although complexity of products are increasing day by day. The design support systems which give guideline of development or technical information were developed for supporting such designers. However they don't reach the point to use in real business because design knowledge is complex and difficult to modeling. This paper proposes a framework to support designer at conceptual design phase. By using this framework, designers can find some solutions to solve a problem they face from technical knowledge catalogue. This paper introduces the idea of state-function model which compose the framework and the way to find technologies from design catalogue.

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The design of product-behaviors is significant in product development, because the product-behaviors will result in product-functions. If some unforeseen failures in product-behaviors are overlooked, product-functions could be badly affected or ever catastrophically lost in the worst case. Because of the ever increasing product system complexity, few designers may no longer be able to handle all the product behaviors. As such, the product behavior which cause fatal product defect may not be fully identified, causing the loss of reliability or lost the brand in the market. Stepwise product behavior design tools available today mainly focus on the management of software development process. However these tools cannot apply to mechanical design because it is necessary to consider structural restrictions of a product. Reported in this paper are engineering methodologies of stepwise product behavior and structure information generation. The simultaneous product behavior and structure information generation process in each design phase is proposed. Three critical issues of system implementation: product information model integrated behavior and structure, hierarchical design process model, reliability evaluation algorithm, are addressed.

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We have developed a simulation code which predicts the film thickness of the electro-deposition coating for automotive bodies. In order to verify this code accuracy, we have done a calculation for the electro-deposition experiment of a simple shape model. The calculated results agreed with the experimental results very well not only qualitatively, but also quantitatively. In addition, we applied this code to the automotive bodies. The analysis results mostly agreed with the results obtained from the experiment with the center pillar and the side sill. This paper will describe the contents and application case of this analysis code.

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When parts with a complicated shape are dipped into coating liquid, the air may be trapped inside. We call this phenomenon an air-pocket. The most popular method to predict the air-pocket is a 2 phases flow analysis of coating liquid and air. However, it takes much time to calculate by this method. Therefore, the feed back to designers is delayed. Our technique is the method that produces bubble particles from the parts surface and traces these bubble particles. As a result of calculation with a simple geometric model, the effectiveness of our technique was confirmed. This paper will describe the examination results of our technique.

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This paper proposes a new stereolithography using liquid photo-initiator and base resin (photopolymer resin without photo-initiator) separately. First, base resin is supplied as a layer, and then a mask pattern is drawn onto the surface with photo-initiator using inkJet printing. When the surface is exposed with a UV lamp, only the drawn pattern is cured by the photo-initiator. In this process, the photo-initiator works as a positive mask and the uncured base resin can be used again because it is not mixed with the photo-initiator. This paper also proposes multiple layers simultaneous exposure method. In our previous fabrication process, base resin supply, mask drawing and curing by exposure are repeated for every layer. On the other hand, our new method repeats only base resin supply and mask drawing for multiple layers and then cures the multiple layers simultaneously by an exposure. This new method should reduce both fabrication time and stair steps of fabricated model. The basic idea, fabrication system implementation and the results of some fabrication experiments are presented.

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One of the major causes of poor surface finish in stereolithography is stair-stepping effect and it causes deviation between designed layers and built layers. Designed layers may be trapezoidal or rectangular, in a two dimensional view, but the available processes can only fabricate rectangular layers because of scanning and recoating limitations. This paper proposes a new stereolithography scanning mechanism that named as slant beam rotation (SBR) scanning to reduce stair-steps. An inclined beam of UV light is used to fabricate slant surfaces and for the change of build angle. The inclined beam is rotated through 360 degrees taking the point of incidence as center of rotation on the surface of resin. Based on SBR scanning scheme, experimental system has been developed to realize the feasibility of the proposed scanning method. In addition a new data format which contains information about the slant angles is proposed and termed as slant edged layer (SEL) data format. As a result of SBR scanning, the average value of surface roughness for a typical object of 400μm layer thickness changed from 18.0μm to 1.1μm. Layer thickness is one of the major reasons of longer build times and if SBR scanning is used, a build time can also be reduced to at least half of the available stereolithography systems.

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In recent years, various types of equipment have become more intelligent. In this research, we propose an intelligent lighting system for providing the necessary illuminance to a desired location; actually construct a fundamental experiment system based on that concept; and verify the effectiveness of the newly developed control method. Verification tests were conducted using an optimization algorithm specialized for lighting control. and the results showed that the various illuminance sensors converged to the preset target illuminance. We also confirmed that the system can respond adaptively to the movement of illuminance sensors and contingencies like lighting malfunctions.

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In recent years, various types of equipment have become more intelligent. In this research, we propose an intelligent lighting system for providing the necessary illuminance to a desired location and develop autonomous distrivuted optimization algorithm which enables advanced lighting control. Verification tests were conducted using the algorithm in consideration of correlation of lighting and illuminance sensors, and the results showed that the actual illuminance converged to the target illuminance. We also confirmed that the algorithm can respond adaptively to environmental changes and is effective for energy saving.

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Until now, the analysis method and the optimization method, which were used in design, were evolving independently. However, when designed combining them, coexistence of time and precision was difficult. Then, we aimed at constructing the high-speed first order design method by the modularizing model and integration of first order analysis and optimization method based on boundary conditions between modules as the dynamic behavior of the design object. It designed using the thermal layout problem (all 16 parameters, design space about 6*10^<24>) of four device modules as a virtual design object. As a result, for 600s, the design time could search about 2*10^7 counts of evaluation for the proper solution, and enabled the very high-speed first order design.

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This paper discusses a method to find a collision-free path of industrial robot manipulators in a known environment where collision detection between manipulators and obstacles is necessary. The configuration of robot manipulators is represented based on the concept of configuration space(C-space) whose coordinates correspond to degrees of freedom of manipulators. Geometric criteria of collision between manipulators and obstacles are formulated and estimated in each region of segmented C-space by using interval analysis. Based on this estimation, the shortest path from given starting point to end point in C-space is obtained by Diikstra algorithm through the series only of the feasible regions where it is guaranteed that manipulators do not collide with obstacles.

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A gradient-based method for global optimization of nonlinear programming problems, named "Modal Trimming Method," has been proposed. It has been shown that the capability of grlobal search is because the renewal of the values of variables based on an extended Newton-Raphson method creates a chaotic behavior. However, this method also creates periodically-vibrating behaviors, which result in a significant defect. An extended secant method has been adopted in place of or in combination with the extended Newton-Raphson method, and this strategy has tended to avoid the periodically-vibrating behaviors and promote the chaotic behavior, which can enhance the capability of global search. In this paper, the modal trimming method with this strategy is applied to a nonlinear programming problem, and its effectiveness is clarified in terms of computational efficiency.

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This paper discusses the effectiveness of cumulative function approximation for improving the computational cost of robust optimal design. Since robust optimal design constructs intermediate model to evaluate the robustness of a design within distribution region, it requires much computational cost for executing sampling to capture the variation of the objective function and constraints within the distribution region. Cumulative function approximation, which is one of response surface methods, initializes approximations of functions and improves them through iteration of optimization over the approximated functions and adaptive addition of sample points based on the optimization result. Its effectiveness is much more outstanding for robust optimal design than for nominal optimal design because of substituting executing sampling over approximated functions instead of executing system analysis. After describing the concept for integrating the cumulative function approximation with robust optimal design, this paper shows its effectiveness through its approximation to various intermediate models of robust optimal design.

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Radial Basis Function netwak(RBF)can make up response surface quite well even ifit has multiple peak. In this paper we will apply approxinate optimization using RBF to satisficing method that is a method of multi-objective optimization. And we will apply it to some multi-objective problems and veri and verify effectiveness of the method.

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In this paper, we present a numerical analysis method for shape ontimization in the rigidity design of plate and shell structures. It is assumed that the design damain is varied in the in-plane direction to maintain the curvatures of the initial shape. An external work, or a compliance is used as an index of the rigidity. The weight minimization problem subjected to the rigidity constraint is formulated as a non-parametric shape optimization problem using the Lagrangian approach and the material derivative method. The shape gradient function and the optimality conditions are theoretically derived for this problem. The traction method is applied to determine the smooth in-plane domain variation that minimizes the objective functional. This method is applied to a simple shell example and a practical automotive chassis component to verify the effectiveness and practical utility for weight reduction of plate and shell structures subjected to the rigidity constraint.

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An approach is proposed to determine the global Optimum solutions for the maximum critical buckling loads of symmetrically laminated composite plates. In the approach the buckling loads are calculated for all possible combinations of the fiber orientation angles with small increments in the outer layers but relatively rough increments in the inner layers. The best twenty solutions and global distribution of the buckling loads are presented to limit the range of search for the next step. This process is repeated until the fiber orientation angle, in the inner-most layer is determined. Numerical examples show the effectiveness of the approach for 8-layer laminated plates.

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We study a recursive optimal design approach of truss structure. Member buckling of truss structure is consid ered. In order to calculate member bukling load, the member length and the second moment of the cross-section are required; however, these are not immediately available in the framework of the recursive optimal design approach so far. In this study, an approach to take account of member buckling in a recursive manner is developed. Example optimal designs are conducted and the results show the practicability of the proposed approach.

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This paper describes the design scheme of the three-dimensional structures based on the concept of the cellular automata. The way to derive the local rule is explained firstly and then, the present scheme is applied to the design of the three-dimensional structure. Finally, the schemes to reduce the coimputational cost are discussed.

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Mesh-free methods are recosnized as a practical tool for structural analysis in case of severe deformation. However this method is more time consuming than conventional finite element method in calculation. In addition it is difficult to apply boundary condition directly to the mesh-free domain. In this paper an effort to overcome such weaknesses for the mesh-free method is introduced. Recently one of the mesh-free method "Element Free Galerkin" has been implemented in the crash and structural analysis code LS-DYNA and has been applied to plastic forming analysis. The example in this paper show good applicability of this new method comparing with conventional FEM.

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In this paper we propose that CSRBFs offer a mechanism to get extrapolated points of a deformed surface for various parts of an object under consideration and demonstrate plausible deformations. The paper extends the work of Kojekine et al. [1]. where software tools based on compactly supported radial based functions (CSRBF), were designed and applied for surface reconstruction of 3D geometric objects. We consider shape transformation (3D warping) as a general type of operation to create new shapes. Examples of applications can be found in animation, i.e. motion and deformation interpolation. A novel collision-detection method is also introduced. This new method allows fast collision query response. Most algorithms described in the literature deal with rigid bodies and are based on some kind of hierarchical representations. We present the alternative approach. The algorithm relies on the idea of "sensor particles": interacting particles distributed on a surface. Two types of particles that interact in a special way are used for determining the minimum distance between two models.

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In this paper, we introduce a new approach to surface mesh improvement problem. In contrast to previous methods we do not tend to preserve new mesh vertices on the original discrete surface. Instead our technique keeps mesh nodes very close to a smooth or piecewise-smooth surface approximated by an initial mesh. As a result, the algorithm is able to improve mesh quality while preserving essential surface characteristics and features. Proposed approach can be applied iteratively not only to polygon al meshes but also to 2D and 3D curves that allows to treat sharp edges and surface boundaries. We demonstrate effectiveness of our method using various triangular and quadrilateral meshes.

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A computational method to solve the contact problem of the structure containing for 3D structure with free-free parts included is presented. Virtual springs are employed coupled with equivalent forces applied to cancel the springs. The computer program has developed. Examples of calculation are demonstrated.

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A hexahedral solid mesh generation method by advancing front type method with templates used is presented. Based on the surface patches made of quadrilateral and triangular shapes, hexahedral elements partially combined with tetrahedron and pentahedron elements are generated in each layer using templates selected from adjacent information between surface patches. The computer program GMESH3D has been developed. Some examples are demonstrated.

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A numerical method to solve the rotational contact-impact behavior of multiple gears in various configurations is presented. A simulation program, GEARS, has been developed to solve the contact-impact behavior of the multiple gear system. Numerical examples are demonstrated.

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In this paper, a numerical method for transient dynamic and acoustic analyses of the floating ladder track with moving loads applied is given. Based on the present method, a computer program to solve the problem has been developed. Numerical examples are demonstrated.

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NEXST_Magnetic is a module developed in "Structural Analysis : The Next Generation (NEXST)" Group for analysis of three-dimensional (3D) magnetic fields. NEXST_Magnetic supports two analyses. The first is nonlinear magnetostatic analysis. The second is non-steady eddy current analysis. In addition, NEXST_Magnetic also supports an evaluation of the electromagnetic force with these computational results. In this paper, the outline of functions of NEXST_Magnetic is introduced. It is confirmed that NEXST_Magnetic can analyze problems with five million degrees of freedom. Moreover, accuracy of the analysis is verified to show its effectiveness.

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The automation, optimization and robust design have been widely used in the engine performance design using one-dimensional simulation. In this paper, application examples of VVT (variable valve timing) engine design problem are reported by using multi-objective optimization approach such as weight factor method and multi-objective GA. In addition, a new approach on multi-objective optimization is proposed for series engine design problem with multi ending speed by using mluti-task system. This system has a main task and 6 subtasks regarding to 6 kinds of engine speed, where each subtask has a set of independent design variables on VVT optimization problem.

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It is well-known that robust design approach is effective to reduce variations of impact crash criteria such as occupation space and acceleration. However, it is difficult to apply robust design approach to crash simulations using FEM because large amount of simulations and computer resource are required. In this paper, a Variable Complexity Modeling concept is introduced into side impact crash simulations using FE model. The robust design is conducted by using Taguchi approach with VCM model, where an automatic analysis and post processing system is integrated by iSIGHT with LS-DYNA and in-hours programs. In this study, 27 kinds of plate thickness are treated as design variables, and the crash angle and position in both of front-rear direction and height of MDB are treated as random variables. As a result of this work, occupation space are 25% increased and those variances are 20% reduced to robust, even though mass is increased 0.5% compare with original design in limited computer resource.

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The 20^<th> century has been the age of products, but the 21^<st> century will be the age of wisdom. In the 20^<th> century, products have been produced in a mass and people enjoy rich life with products. And engineers have been focusing their attention to produce better quality products in less time, with less cost and with less resources. Their values have been nothing other than the functions of their final products. But does this hold true even in a age of wisdom? This paper points out that the age of wisdom will be completely different from our traditional market based society, and values will be created and only wisdom creators can sell their wisdom at a right value. Thus, communication will play an important role.

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21^<st> century is said to be the age of knowledge creation. 20^<th> century has been an age of product realization. What are their differences? The main difference is that in an age of product realization, the value of products was determined by market. But the value of knowledge is not, It is determined by communication between the knowledge creator and its potential buyer, because the value of knowledge varies from customer to customer, depending upon what experience he or she had in his or her life. Thus, the knowledge cannot be sold unless the knowledge creator communicates with its potential buyer person to person to estimate how a person looks at life.. But the present communication technology, although very much advanced, does not provide enough capabilities for listening to understand on what a potential buyer set a high value. The current technology focuses its primary attention to convey exactly what a speaker would like to tell. Thus, listen technology has to be developed in addition to the present framework of speak technology.

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The importance of the role of verbs in the earlier stages of design is pointed out. There is a distinct difference between English and Japanese languages in the usage of verbs. To clarify a customer's requirements in terms of functions, behaviors should be clearly defined by verbs for a specific context. But Japanese use the same verb for different situations. To avoid such an ambiguity, videos and animations may be very useful for defining the behaviors clearly and for making clear the context.

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This paper describes the importance of the role of onomatope or imitation sound in interpreting the Japanese language. As Japanese use the same verbs for different situations or for contexts, onomatope is usually used to fill in the gap to describe behavior more precisely. Although sound has long been considered in our design, it was mostly for the later stages of design or in detailed design and it was not for the purpose of understanding the situation or the context better in the earlier stages of design in order to really grasp the intent of a customer's requirements. It is pointed out that research to introduce onomatope into design is needed to quantitatively and comprehensively make clear the role of onomatope in the Japanese language to correspond to our diversifying customer's requirements under quickly and widely varying conditions.

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As recent trend has shown that consumers prefer buying products that reflect their own personality and characteristic, it is almost certain that individual-oriented product is gaining importance day by day. Parallel with the popularization of placing order via the Internet, this research combines the usage of Internet with the concept of individual-oriented product, thus proposes a system called Internet-based Consumer-oriented Product Ordering System. In this system, customer is given freedom to select their desirable product specifications from a very vast pool of selections. Nevertheless, as the vast choices of specifications may also confuse the user, a fuzzy theory and data mining approach is used to aid the selection process, where by past transaction data is used to as main reference for the specification determination process.

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We have proposed a collaboration support system for 3D shape evaluation in virtual space, which is based on the study on 3D shape evaluation and communication in virtual environment. The system basically consists of PC, HMD and magnetic sensors, and users can share the embodied interaction by observing interaction between their avatars in virtual space. However, the HMD and magnetic sensors, which are put on the users, would restrict the nonverbal communication. Then, we have tried to compensate the loss of nodding of partner's avatar by introducing the speech-driven embodied interactive actor InterActor. Sensory evaluation by paired comparison of 3D shapes in the collaborative situation in virtual space and in real space and the questionnaire are performed. The result demonstrates the effectiveness of Inter Actor's nodding in the collaborative situation.

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In this paper, we develop an arm wrestling interaction robot for the application to the robot which observes human facial color under emotional change with force display. The arm wrestling interaction robot can apply the force display to the trainee's upper arms and forearms. By using the robot, the changes of various physiological data can be measured and analyzed as an index of emotional state associated with circulatory dynamics in response to force display. We also propose the concept of a robot system for rehabilitation and health care support.

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Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology, Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering, In recent years, there is a problem that the number of mail advertisement which a user receives increases quickly. It is take time very much and difficult for a user to look for mail including information needed from a lot of mail advertisements. In order to solve this problem, this research proposed the distinction method of a mail advertisement in consideration of the importance of words and signs. And built a system for searching for the distinction conditions of a mail advertisement. From the results of experiments, it turns out that the distinction method of the proposed mail advertisement is effective, and the distinction conditions of the high mail advertisement of distinction accuracy were found by the search system.

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The information retrieval in a help function cannot necessarily find immediately the page for which a user asks. The reasons are the difference among keywords which users input,and the difference among users' knowledge to software. Then, Individual-ized Retrieval by Keyword is proposed newly. The more users use this system,the more it is adapted for users.

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