IT Systems In Engineering Syed Tanweer Hussain, M.S(NZ), M.S(Au), PGD(NZ), B.Sc(Pak ) Department of Electrical Engineering, CIIT Islamabad

IT Systems In Engineering

Syed Tanweer Hussain,

M.S(NZ), M.S(Au), PGD(NZ), B.Sc(Pak)

Department of Electrical Engineering, CIIT Islamabad

Introduction

Engineering History Role of Engineer Engineering Systems Engineering in 20th Century IT Systems and Engineering Future Design Practice

cont..

Introduction

Research Directions IT based Engineering Systems Tools and

Techniques Education for Next Century Engineers Preparing Engineering Students for

International Workplace Conclusion

Engineering History

Honzo Habilis was the first species of mankind who use stones as tools. They designed, developed and manufactured first engineering product in 250000 BC.

Fig.1 A Flint Axe (courtesy of British museum)

Engineering History cont..

Technical innovation was started after 1600 in which science played a major part.

Up till mid-19th century engineering faces cultural prejudices in the education system due to the influence of writers like M. Arnold (1869) and J. H. Newman (1852)

o Arnold’ blamed engineers for the worst features of

industrial civilization. o Newman advocated an education system which rejected

industrial and commercial values.


Post-1700 industrial growth can be divided into five (5) groups of vital interacting industries

1. The first period was created by the engineering components and systems of the textile, coal and iron industries, and was marked by an increasing use of water power and steam power.


2. The next phase was dominated by the steam railway with its attendant industries and services, within which came the new ideas and practices which continued to transform industrial society.

3. The third period is Heavy duty industrial electrification which was dominated by machines in its early phase and later by the motor car industry and by services dependent on scientific research. These included wireless telegraphy, chemical manufacture and aviation.


4. The fourth period began with the engineering innovations of the 1939-1945 war: electronics, aviation and rocketry, nuclear power, computing and telecommunications.

5. The fifth era is now being intimidated by artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and, biotechnology The engineering system is emerging from studies of the brain and mind.


The evolving process in Engineering System with higher levels of awareness, language and analysis is still going on.

Today, the radically changing nature of engineering is creating problems which can no longer be ignored and the Education System and the Professional Engineers need to meet this challenge.

Engineering

Engineering is much more than the manufacturing of products by mechanical methods.

Design is essentially a mental activity.

Intelligence or virtual reality are of great practical import, and are the material with which the engineer works.

Engineering Systems

The systems are defined as man-made, created and utilized to provide services in defined environments for the benefit of users and other stakeholders.

These systems may be configured with one or more

of the following:

Hardware, Software, Processes, Procedures Facilities and Naturally occurring entities (e.g. water,

organisms, minerals). In practice, they are thought of as products or services.

Engineering Systems cont..

The definition ,architecture and elements of particular system depend on an observer’s interests and responsibilities.

One person's system-of-interest can be viewed as a system element in another person system.


Whatever the boundaries chosen to define the system, the concepts and models are adapt individual instances of life cycles to its system principles.

A Typical system -of- interest in an aircraft and its environment of operation are shown in Fig.2.


Fig 2. Typical system view of an aircraft in its environment of useCourtesy of ISO / IEC


Humans are considered as users and as elements of a system.

– In the first case the human user is a beneficiary of the operation of the system.

– In the second case the human is an operator carrying out specified system functions.

– An individual can be, simultaneously or sequentially, a user and an element of a system.

– That a system can be viewed in isolation as an entity, i.e. a product, or as an ordered collection of functions capable of interacting with its surrounding environment, i.e. a set of services.

Engineering in 20th Century

Since 1600, Engineering has become science. Engineering science is a practical experience analyzed and expressed through theory.

DESIGN in Engineer Head

Computer Model Laboratory Model

DESIGN in Engineer Head

Math, Physics & Computer Science Engineering, other Technologies

Proto Type Model

Imaginary Concept

Laws, Principles Methods and Procedures

Testing for reliability and efficiency

Actual Product

Actual Product

Actual Product

Fig 3. Design cycle from idea to product

Engineering in 20th Century cont..

Engineering, Medical Technology, Microelectronics, Neuroscience, Nanotechnology and Computer Science are combining to create Engineering Systems.

Research into Artificial Intelligence, Biological Intelligence uses new concepts, constructs and theories which serve as tools for solving practical problems..

Engineering in 20th Century cont..

Therefore Engineering could be systematically analyzed and redefined in an increasingly scientific manner

This will probably make engineering the exemplary science in the next century,

Role of Engineer

The engineer of the mid-2lst century will be as different from his 20th century counterpart as the latter differs from a 19th century ironmaster, a mechanic in an 18th century coal mine, a 15th century bell founder

It would be unjust to claim that those who come later are better engineers than those in earlier times.

All are engineers but they differ in that they work with technology which changes its nature from age to age, and this transforms engineers themselves.

Role of Engineer

In some ways their role does not change as in each age the engineer serves his/her community.

IT and Engineering Systems

Use of information technology in Engineering Systems makes engineering system more mature, flexible and powerful.

Lets have a look on • Past design environments and Modern Design environments

IT and Engineering Systems Past Design Environments

In the past, control was often achieved by mechanical means.

Embedded computational platforms were extremely resource-limited.

Systems generally were designed for separate operation, with a limitation of function and performance.

The environments into which they were deployed were believed to be well defined.

IT and Engineering Systems Past Design Environments

Dependence on human operation permitted engineering systems to be simple and often unchanged over the lifetime of the system.

Over-design was used to achieve wide margins of safety at the expense of performance.

IT and Engineering Systems Modern Design

Modern design assumptions are rapidly changing largely as a consequence of the integration of IT.

1. Embedded systems will be a key source of leverage for innovation in engineered systems. These systems will be deployed in contexts that also are information intensive and subject to embedded control.


As system functionality demands increase, so does the expectation that systems can operate largely autonomously and offer high-performance response.

For example, no driver could be asked to perform the independent wheel control operations implemented by an ABS automated braking system.

Such critical tasks are increasingly delegated to embedded systems.


Performance-based designs are needed in a wide range of efficiency and constrained-usage problems, many of which are fundamentally dynamic.

For example– Control of hybrid gas-electric automobile engines. – Complex control of air vehicles that must accommodate

constrained landing situations through vertical takeoff and landing, yet require high-performance forward flight. Sophisticated environmental control must manage energy resource demands and air quality requirements under changing operating conditions.


Closed system designs are a thing of the past, and attention must turn to open systems. IT-intensive systems now interact with equally IT Intensive contexts and may share computational resources..

Future design practice in IT based Engineering Systems

Rigorous design approaches are needed that can be guaranteed to yield timely and safe adaptation, fault and intrusion tolerance, fault and intrusion isolation, and autonomous recovery.

In the past, complex systems were built using centralized, distributed designs. In Future systems are “aggregated” rather than based on a distributed design.

Future design practice in IT based Engineering Systems

For example, – Medical intensive care units and operating rooms focus on

the “plug and play” situational usage of oxygen, temperature, and blood glucose sensors, as well as control elements such as infusion pumps for anesthesia and insulin, ventilators, and surgical micro-robotic devices.

– The electric power grid requires the ability to flexibly include and exclude regions so that cascading failures can be contained yet supply sustained.

– Renewable resources such as solar and wind power are inherently intermittent, and future control systems to exploit them will need to adapt dynamically for their variable capacity and ability to participate in generation.

Future Needs of IT Based Engineering

Greater alignment is needed with the physical and engineering design disciplines, in particular control design.

Building scientific and engineering foundations for IT based engineering systems.

Research directions in IT based Engineering Systems

Embedded and Hybrid Systems

These are embedded control systems, where “hybrid” refers to a rigorous combination of discrete and continuous control.

Hybrid control determines both, the discrete mode switching or state transition behavior of a software controller, and the evolution of system state via “closed-loop” continuous or cyclic controllers.

A growing base of principles for hybrid control can advise both, the understanding of modal structure in the underlying system dynamics, and the design of cooperative control regimes required for high performance and safe operation.


Real-time and resource-constrained systems.

Previously, research focused almost exclusively on hard real-time scheduling. New strategies are seen for mixed hard and soft, and dynamic real time scheduling regimes.

Time-triggered methods.

The integration of cyclic and reactive system requirements is sought, e.g., through mixed time-triggered and event-triggered system frameworks.


Power-aware computing.

Due to limitations imposed by battery life and onboard energy sources, the area of power-aware computing also has become extremely active. A scientific focus on the integration of services to simultaneously assure critical properties has become an urgent priority, timing and power performance and guarantees, concurrency control, isolation for noninterference, fault tolerance, and security.


Model-based design

This aims to integrate the modeling and design of the physical system with that of the embedded computing system.

Current research seeks the automatic generation of code from models.

Tools and Techniques User-Machine Interface (UMI)

UMI makes explicit the method by which the users’ interact with the system to perform tasks.

UMI features include software, display characteristics, and input/output devices.

UMI facilitates or impairs the decision making process.

The well-designed user interface contributes to a significant improvement in performance.


UMI Design Depends upon following:- What data are required and relevant at each step? How data should be presented (text, Audio etc.)? What input devices and methods should be provided for

the user (keyboards, pointing devices, etc.)? What output and communication capabilities are needed

(display types,, networks, Motors, solenoids etc.)? To eliminate confusion, data also must be available to the

user in a consistent fashion.


The interface must be sufficiently flexible to accommodate variations in user skills.

UMI designer may promote problem solving processes by incorporating constructive solutions to some of the classic barriers to effective problem solving, such as rigid thinking and predisposition toward certain approaches which results in a failure to consider all possible alternatives.

Education for next century Engineers

In the 18th century engineers used watchmaker’s tools to make microscopes, telescopes and other scientific instruments.

Today they use scanning tunneling microscopes and superconducting quantum interference devices in engineering research carried out with industrial application in mind.

The developments in the engineering technology led to widespread changes in the profession and in education, and the current radical transformation of the nature of engineering will demand, fundamental changes in engineering education.


The standards setting engineering of the next century may result from neuroscience, evolutionary genetics, computer science, microelectronics, nanotechnology, molecular physics, microbiology and quantum mechanics.


Fig.4. Future Engineering Students Course Module

Engineering Student

Math

Physic

Chemistry

Computer Science

Neuroscience

Microelectronic

Nanotechnology

Quantum Mechanics

Microbiology Evolutionary Genetics

Electrical Engineering

Communication Mechanical Engineering Management Sciences

Conventional Classrooms

Conventional learning uses books, Labs and expertise. Networking and Internet brought new resources as transfer of teaching materials between computers, hypertext in programmed presentations, e-mail and chat. as a demand for advanced description of learning related objects as teaching programs, student schedules, teaching materials, etc.

Conventional Classrooms

Some of the main problems in Conventional education are huge amount of information, quick change of teaching programs and materials, shortage of time both at teacher and student side, shortage of resources, lack of infrastructure, Political interference, administrative problems and demand by students for individually configured and scheduled programs, etc.

Some of the main advantages are person to person contact, interaction with expertise on personal level etc.

Virtual Classrooms

Application of advanced computer technology in higher education is not only a tool for advanced distance learning. Application of modeling makes utilization of advances in virtual technology possible. Virtual higher education is considered not only as a possible solution for problems of advanced distance learning but also as solution for problems of campus style higher education.

Virtual Classrooms

Virtual university is considered as a place of teaching to fulfill special learning demands as a system for teaching in an unlimited area using powerful computer networks and one of the tools for reform in higher education. Virtual higher education is highly based on conventional learning. Application and methodology of multimedia

Virtual Classrooms

The following quotation was taken from the UNESCO report.

“The progress of the information and communications technologies should give rise to a general deliberation on access to knowledge in the world of tomorrow.

The Commission recommends: - the diversification and improvement of distance

education through the use of new technologies, greater use of those technologies in adult education and especially in the in-service training of teachers, the strengthening of developing countries’ infrastructure and capabilities in this field and the dissemination of such technologies throughout society; these are in any case prerequisites to their use in formal education systems.”

Virtual Workplace

Virtual teams reduce economic, geographical and Time constraints. However, they also place new demands on engineers who must be able to function effectively on such virtual teams, which in many cases are internationally dispersed

Virtual Workplace

For engineering educators, the challenge is to prepare their students to enter this- “new workplace” with the appropriate skills to succeed.

Future environments will allow diverse, geographically dispersed science and engineering teams to share information and transform this information to knowledge by combining and analyzing it in new ways.

Virtual Workplace

This also points to another aspect of the way engineers need to work together in the future and develop a systems thinking. Systems thinking require that engineering projects, no .matter how small, are treated as a system and not as a mere collection of components.

A System Model of Virtual International Engineering Education Team is shown in Table 1

A System Model Virtual International Engineering Education Team

Table 1. Virtual International Engineering Education Team : A System Model

Culture Norms and Expectations*Collectivist vs. individuality*Uncertainty avoidanceTeam Structure*Sub-group by location*Cross located subgroups*Dispersed individuals*Opportunities for face to face exchangeStated Team Objectives*Technical performance*International Awareness*Team Skill Development

Process Inputs

Individual Differences*Technical Expertise*Social Interaction*MotivationInformation Linking Technology*Quality of Linking*Syn. vs Asyn*Visual Links

Virtual Group Dynamic

Team leadership behavior

*consideration*Initiating structure*Intellectual StimulatorGroup Process*Conflict management*Role clarity*Communication*Culture dominance

Affective Moderators

*TeamMember Affectivity*Moral*Trust*Citizenship*Commitment

PerformanceOutcomes__*Technical Knowledge*Satisfaction*Team skill development*Cross culture understanding

Preparing Engineering Students for the International Virtual Workplace

The “new workplace” for engineering is increasingly at the interface of three environments:

The Virtual environment, The Product Realization environment, The Human environment The Virtual environment, in which designs can

be created and explored, with activities that range from interaction via the Internet to 3-D visualization and immersion in alternative designs of engineered systems.

Preparing Engineering Students for the International Virtual Workplace

The Product Realization environment, in which physical embodiments of designs can be produced and evaluated

The Human environment, in which people work together.

The demands of the business world are increasingly being met by the use of virtual teams to conduct engineering work to design and implement products and services.

Intelligent Synthesis Environment (ISE)

For example Intelligent Synthesis Environment (ISE) developed by NASA represents a fundamental cultural change in engineering design, mission synthesis and scientific research. It is an extension of the concurrent engineering and SBD approaches, based on simulating the entire life cycle of the engineering system before physical prototyping, from concept development to detailed design, prototyping, qualification testing, operations, maintenance and disposal.

Conclusion

– The changes in the nature of strategic engineering require changes in the way engineering is defined, described, analyzed, interpreted and realized.

– The implications for professional organization and for education and training are great and the time has come to organize link between different technologies.

– Today engineering is filling the enlightening, educative and culturally creative roles once enjoyed by classical studies, theology, philosophy and history in former periods.

Conclusion

IT integrates several methods for gaining insight into the nature of things and makes radically new disclosures of man, nature, technology, industry and culture.

IT-intensive Engineering systems contain many scientific challenges and great opportunity.

Its importance for the future economic vitality of all engineering fields that it cannot be overstated. Therefore, we must now confront the difficulty and necessity of achieving assured IT based Engineering Systems for critical applications.

Conclusion

Design, implementation and certification methods need to be better integrated. IT based engineering system development must become a repeatable engineering discipline, based on firm scientific foundations, and equipped with efficient and dependable methods of production.

What Next?

Fig. Microelectronics, Information Technology and Network Theory model the working of the cerebellum (Bradford/MIT Press, 1988.)

THE END

If interlinking brain through information networks becomes possible, this will question existing concepts of individuality and personality. If these developments do take place, they will change the make-up of engineering and other professions.

Documents

IT Systems In Engineering Syed Tanweer Hussain, M.S(NZ), M.S(Au), PGD(NZ), B.Sc(Pak ) Department of Electrical Engineering, CIIT Islamabad