Cyber-physical augmentation

Abstract

Ubiquitous technologies provide many product innovation opportunities for industrial design engineers, such as creating user centered cyber-physical systems with adaptive capabilities to individual users and environments. The exploration discussed in this paper aims to uncover needs to know for designers to successfully augment physical products with cyber functionalities, or create tangible elements with cyber-based products or to enrich products with full cyber-physical functionalities. For this exploration the authors could rely on experiences with design work of many students and on literature reporting on case studies. A third source has been descriptions of special cyber-physical systems. An analysis of the students’ design work, the reported cases, and definitions and descriptions have led to conclusions that designers need to adopt new knowledge and procedures regarding ubiquitous technologies, knowledge management, adaptive behavior, system design, new prototyping techniques, user participation in cyber-physical systems and controlling the changing state of designed product in the use phase. For this design aspects have been identified and six design principles have been formulated. The identified design aspects can already be addressed in the application of cyber-physical augmentation. Future research will address the bridging between the design engineering and the cyber-physical world by adapting knowledge fields and methods, including the user in the design scope and by developing a knowledge construction method and an integrated design method incorporating the aspects, principles and (adjusted) techniques.