Supporting mechatronic design via a distributed network of intelligent agents

Product development is often performed by functionally and geographically distributed groups of people. In such an environment, there are many concerns that must be traded off against one another before a product can be brought to market. An example of this tradeoff is high performance versus low cost; a product with high performance generally costs more than a product with low performance. When such competing objectives arise, as they usually do in any product, then a solution must be negotiated among competing objectives.