Both industrial design and engineering design address aspects of product development prior to manufacture: industrial designers emphasize the styling and consumer aspects of products, while design and manufacturing engineers focus on functionality and manufacture of products. In this interdisciplinary, combined research-curriculum development project, we are developing (1) methodologies for achieving effective collaboration and integration of industrial design and product engineering in the early phases of product development and (2) integrated engineering and industrial design curriculum where industrial design and engineering students will learn the integration methodologies and conduct interdisciplinary product design projects.

We are developing methodologies for the integration of industrial design and product engineering in the early phases of product development. Traditionally treated as separate activities, this project will use computer-based design tools to allow designers and engineers to work simultaneously and cooperatively. Increased international competition, development of new technologies, diverse and refined consumer demands, and the pressure for rapid and accurate designing of new products make an integrated design approach essential. On-going evaluation of the research will be conducted by an advisory panel and the methodologies developed will be tested through industry-sponsored projects.

The research carried out here is concerned with devising robust and reliable control strategies to minimize the throughput from the input to the output for large linear and nonlinear networks in the face of perturbations within the system (the robustness issue) and failures of certain sensors or actuators (the reliability issue). Current research effort is concentrated on the development of multivariable nonlinear polar controllers to control plants represented by state space models with structured nonlinearities.

Distributed interactive simulations require a new approach for verification and validation and analysis. A DIS exercise combines hardware and software in the form of constructive, live, and virtual simulations. This project investigates the need for new ways to verify and validate DIS exercises and proposes the use of experimental techniques to fulfill requirements. The ARPA Joint Task Force Advanced Technology Demonstration for command and control requires verification and validation of advanced distributed simulations. This project intends to validate the object modeling working group approach.

The goal is to define a technical framework for CMMS. It is an ongoing project for advanced distributed simulation and distributed interactive simulation.