semweb2slide08

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I was fascinated by the possibility of using the Internet to support large-scale engineering projects, such as the design of a new airplane, involving thousands of people at hundreds of companies.

Inspired by distributed blackboard systems such as Hearsay, we modeled the process as human and computer agents collaborating through a shared knowledge base, representing a model of the artifact.

When an agent modified the design, affected agents were notified so they could critique the change, or respond with changes of their own. For example, a hydraulics engineer installing fluid lines might alert an airframe agent to check whether they interfered with the movement of any control surface.

Although a centralized shared model is depicted, the model can be distributed in practice to facilitate scaling. Each agent maintains aspects of the model most relevant to it in local CAD systems, and provides that information to other agents that need it.