🚀 go-pugleaf

          The University of Western Ontario
            Department of Computer Science

                    COLLOQUIUM

Speaker: Bernard A. Nadel
Title:   Artificial Intelligence in the Automated Design of
         Automobile Power Transmissions:
         A Collaborative Research Project with Ford Motor Co.
Time:    Wednesday, November 25, 1992, at 2:00pm
Place:   MC 320
Abstracts:
    This talk describes our system called TRANS-FORM for automating
    the process of designing automobile power transmissions. The work
    is being conducted in collaboration with the Ford Motor Company
    Advanced Transmission Design Department in Livonia, Michigan.
    Our current focus is on the design of the mechanical subsystem, but
    we anticipate extending this later to the electrical and hydraulic
    subsystems also.

    TRANS-FORM uses Constraint-Directed Reasoning to perform
    transmission design in a hierarchy of abstraction levels. These levels
    will ultimately include the functional, abstract state, kinematic,
    topological, stick-diagram, geometric and gearset levels. Design at
    three of these levels, kinematic, topological and gearset, has so far
    been implemented and will be described in this talk.

    TRANS-FORM has been able to rediscover all known transmission
    of the type explored, including the well-known Axod, HydraMatic
    700 and Jatco transmissions as well as an extended version of the
    well-known Simpson transmission. These are built from two
    planetary gearsets and have four forward speeds and one reverse
    speed. Future generalizations will allow transmissions
    with three and four gearsets and an arbitrary number of speeds.
    Such transmissions are relatively little- explored, and the
    corresponding extensions to TRANS-FORM should allow it to be
    generating patentable new designs in the near future.