The second day of the 2nd IFIP Working Conference on Computer Aided Innovation was filled with many good presentations. Among them were:
- Automatic Shape Variations for Optimization and Innovation (presented by Noel Leon-Rovira and Jose Cueva)
- Constraint Based Modeling As a Means To Link Dialectical Thinking and Corporate Data: Application to DOE (presented by Thomas Eltzer)
- Computer-aided Patent Analysis: Finding Invention Peculiarities (presented by Gaetano Cascini)
- OTSM Network of Problems For Representing and Analyzing a Problem Situation with Computer (presented by Nikolai Khomenko)
- Computational Explorations of Compatibility and Innovation (presented by Ricardo Sosa)
- Enhancing Interoperability In the Design Process: The PROSIT approach (presented by Gaetano Cascini)
The two papers I found most interesting were those presented by Gaetano Cascini.
In his presentation on patent analysis, Cascini discussed how he has been examining the extraction of mereological and functional relationships from patent literature. This was particularly interesting to me since my research team had already developed a technology for such high-level concept extraction from general text. Cascini then introduced the concept of applying a metric to the extracted relations to identify elements of the patent that were most likely to be the distinctive elements of the patent.
In his second paper, Cascini discussed a collaborative project between the University of Florence and Milan Polytechnic. The focus of this project is to find a way to connect computer-aided-innovation tools to computer-aided-design tools. This is another technical challenge that I find personally very interesting. The major issue that makes this difficult is the disparity in the level of abstract captured by each technology. CAI works at a fairly high level of abstraction which at times may have no direct relation to the physical manifestation of a system. CAD tools, by contrast, are used to model the physical geometry of systems. This is a big problem and its solution would lead to a major change in the way we design systems.
The day was capped off by a discussion panel on Innovation From the Customer Point of View. I was on of the invited panelist for this session. There was some lively discussion around the topic, and the audience was very engaged.
I also gave a short presentation on the work that my research team has been doing in the area of computer aided innovation. Here I described the feedback I have gotten from engineers and innovation workers in the Global 2000 manufacturing companies and how this client input has led to the development of a class of knowledge-enabled innovation applications. The concept is grounded in the coupling of proven innovation best practice with leading edge semantic text analysis. I showed some examples of engineering methods such as root cause analysis, system functional analysis, and failure mode and effects analysis and how they are made easier and more robust through knowledge-enablement, accelerating product delivery and return on investment for organizations using such technology.
All in all, the conference was very interesting and I am glad to have been able to participate.
Comments