This paper focuses on the role and nature of text as external representations that designers interact with, in the same way as they interact with sketch representations during a creative design process. Existing studies about text and natural languages in the field of design studies have primarily focused on how to record the verbal communications and written text, uttered and expressed during a design process so that one could reconstruct, remember, and recollect the situations in the past. Little has been studied, however, about how designers choose wordings in expressing design ideas and concepts, how such textual representations evolve over time, and how the choice of wording affects the subsequent design process. Based on our experience of conducting design case studies in an industry-university cooperative research project, we describe how designers express words, phrases, sentences and wordings on whiteboards, and how design materials expressed in text evolve over time. We then argue for a research agenda for design , which focuses on the role and nature of wording as external representations to interact with throughout a design process.

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In this paper, an adaptive gait control system for a quadruped robot traversing over irregular terrain with an intermittent crawl pattern using central pattern generator (CPG) networks with motor dynamics is proposed. We develop a new CPG model, in which the inhibitory and excitatory neurons are replaced by two DC motors that drive the joints of the legs directly. The DC motor functions not only as an actuator but also as a component of the CPG model. Four CPG models are mutually connected to each other to control the joints of each leg. Through the adoption of the concept of the center of gravity (COG), the parameters of CPG units can be varied to adjust the period and amplitude of CPG units to realize the intermittent crawl pattern. Using the plural parameters information, CPG units can change the angle range of joints to control the COG in the stable region when the robot walks on irregular terrain without the need for the superfluous calculation of dynamic. Through the experimental results, we confirm that the robot can realize adaptive and stable walking on irregular terrain by using the proposed CPG control system with the signals from the environment.

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