Sambit Datta

Typed feature structures and design space exploration

Design space explorers are computer programs that play on an exploration metaphor to support design. They assist designers in creating alternative designs by structuring the process of design creation in a space of alternatives. Subsidiary metaphors relevant to design space explorers are generation, navigation, and reuse. This paper introduces, in two sketches, typed feature structures as a formal system in which a design space explorer and its knowledge level might be implemented. First, informal and abstract properties of typed feature structures suffice to build a sketch of the behavior of a design space explorer. Second, using an example based on single-fronted cottages (a common Australian housing type), we outline the typed feature structure machinery most relevant to design space exploration.

Erasure in Design Space Exploration

Design space explorers support designers through the metaphor of exploration, a guided movement through a space of possibilities. A subsumption-based design space explorer structures the space in which it navigates by a relation of information specificity. In particular, it conditions its exploration operators so that they move in predictable ways in the underlying space of designs. We have extended the formal system of typed features structures to support subsumption-based design space exploration. This paper discusses the exploration operators available when subsumption-based design space explorers are implemented in typed feature structures. Of particular interest is the handling of erasure, where the constraint on generative operators to be monotonic wrt information specificity leads to a surprisingly clean view of erasure.

Computation and construction of vault geometry prototypes

Physical models and scaled prototypes of architecture play an important role in design. They enable architects and designers to investigate the formal, functional, and material attributes of the design. Understanding digital processes of realizing scaled prototypes is a significant problem confronting design practice. This paper reports on three approaches to the translation of Gaussian surface models into scaled physical prototype models. Based on the geometry of Eladio Dieste’s Gaussian Vaults, the paper reports on the aspects encountered in the process of digital to physical construction using scaled prototypes. The primary focus of the paper is on computing the design geometry, investigating methods for preparing the geometry for fabrication and physical construction. Three different approaches in the translation from digital to physical models are investigated: rapid prototyping, two-dimensional surface models in paper and structural component models using CNC fabrication. The three approaches identify a body of knowledge in the design and prototyping of Gaussian vaults. Finally the paper discusses the digital to fabrication translation processes with regards to the characteristics, benefits and limitations of the three approaches of prototyping the ruled surface geometry of Gaussian Vaults. The results of each of three fabrication processes allowed for a better understanding of the digital to physical translation process. The use of rapid prototyping permits the production of form models that provide a representation of the physical characteristics such as size, shape and proportion of the Gaussian Vault.

Mixed initiative in design space exploration

An alternative to the manual construction of building designs is the exploration of design spaces. Designers engage in model construction guided by a formal generative process. One formal model for exploration is traversal under an informational ordering of design concepts. In our system, formal generation is provided by /spl pi/-resolution over a domain of typed feature structures. Given this machinery, we describe a mixed initiative environment for unfolding a design space description. We represent building design knowledge using typed feature structures, supporting intensionality, partialness, structure sharing and cyclicity.

HiGame: Improving elderly well-being through horticultural interaction:

Family support is the key to the well-being problems of elderly. Unlike health problem, mental problem often depends on the social network of elderly. How to enhance elderly well-being problems will become how to increase the interaction between elderly and their family. Horticultural interaction proves to be an effective but smooth impact on improving well-being problems of elderly. By designing a horticultural interaction game for motivating or invoking the communication between elderly and their family members, the prototype is developed based on the framework of behavior setting and semi-fixed features. Three groups of games, physical games, virtual games, and spatial interaction games, are analyzed and 14 cases are studied and evaluated for the features required. Particularly, spatial interaction games with both physical and virtual games are brought into scope, and HiGame (Horticultural Interaction Game, hi game) is developed. Five scenarios using sensor network and mobile interface are unleashed and tested in an experiment with two sets of elderly family participants. HiGame has connection to both physical and virtual spaces for elderly and their family. Elderly interact with distant family through physical watering, weeding, and fertilizing. And distant family use virtual game to support elderly. The interaction process can be further enhanced with the following: (1) separating the tasks for elderly and family ends individually and then cooperating together might enforce the intergenerational interaction and reflection on cooperation in the gaming process; (2) the connection among each scenario can be further developed into a different process, such as competition of different members for helping the elderly to complete certain task might motivate the game experience further.