A CASE STUDY IN MULTI-DISCIPLINARY DISTRIBUTED COLLABORATIVE DESIGN

摘要

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Utah participated in a collaborative, remote, rapid design and manufacturing experiment. Several domain experts at widely distributed geographical locations worked on a challenging multi-disciplinary design problem producing a rugged, compact and light-weight housing for a Video See-Through Head-Mounted Display to be used in image-guided surgical procedures. This was used as a case study to validate and motivate ongoing research in a distributed engineering design and manufacturing system. The hypothesis was that Net-based use of a highly supportive integrated, collaborative design and manufacturing environment would dramatically expedite the design and manufacturing process. Using the already existing Alpha_I design and manufacturing environment as a platform, we embarked on a project to collapse the normal six-month cycle of design and prototype iterations into a single three-week period of collaborative design. The lessons learned demonstrate the potential success of the hypothesis, and also provide a basis for further research into tools and environments needed to support integrated collaborative design, engineering, and manufacture. We discuss the results of the experiment, application of the existing distributed design system, the supporting system architecture, and possible future research issues brought to light by the experiment.