Priority Programme “Daring More Intelligence – Design Assistants in Mechanics and Dynamics” (SPP 2353)
In 2021, the Senate of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) established the Priority Programme “Daring More Intelligence – Design Assistants in Mechanics and Dynamics” (SPP 2353). The programme is designed to run for six years. The present call invites proposals for the second three-year funding period.
To respect ecological and societal responsibilities and challenges as well as to account for stricter and more complex regulations, future systems design has to become increasingly multidisciplinary. Computer-based support as employed today in mechanics and dynamics, mostly limited to system analysis, is not sufficient anymore. Even in advanced design workflows, usually large-scale, simulation-driven parameter studies are conducted and inspected only manually to iteratively alter a candidate design based on experience and expert knowledge. This process is not only very time-consuming but also typically based on subjective rather than on formalised mathematical objectives.
The research in the established Priority Programme is to aim at the development of design assistance systems combining methods from optimisation, artificial intelligence and dynamics/mechanics to assist with and partially automate the interdisciplinary design of engineering systems. This may not only result in designs that are actually optimal with respect to formalised criteria, but such design assistants may equip design engineers with an artificial intuition supplementing their own specialised expertise. This way, criteria nowadays only considered in later design stages may be taken into account early on, improving resulting systems in a much more fundamental manner than today’s incremental improvements following established design paradigms.
The key to realising design assistant systems of practical impact in dynamics and mechanics is to go beyond the state of the art in system analysis, optimisation and design by integrating methods from artificial intelligence and machine learning. For instance, machine learning methods can be valuable tools to infer surrogate models and response surfaces that can be used to achieve a manageable calculation effort for large-scale analysis as part of automated design procedures relying on multicriteria optimisation. Methods from artificial intelligence may even directly lead to certain creative design decisions. However, since machine learning and artificial intelligence have recently thrived mostly in fields far from the design of dynamic systems, it is as yet rather unclear which methods will be best suited and, in particular, how they can be combined with system analysis and optimisation to achieve better designs. Therefore, a central goal of the Priority Programme is to develop benchmark processes for various applications that can demonstrate the functioning and advantages of a design process supplemented by artificially intelligent design assistants. These benchmark processes are to make it possible to switch from an analysis-centric to a criteria-centric design process. Ideally, the design assistant components should be highly flexible with easily accessible interfaces so that they can be combined in a modular way to build up increasingly holistic, assisted design procedures, and to serve as a foundation for continued research in the second funding period.
It is the aim to pool the expertise in dynamics/mechanics, mathematics, information technology and control engineering in Germany, and to create new and strengthen existing networks in order to achieve the set goals.
In the second funding period, the Priority Programme will drive research towards the following areas:
- replacement of subjective evaluation criteria by formalised objectives in all application fields of dynamics in mechanics and mechatronics, as well as the introduction of data-driven instead of rule-based criteria and the evaluation of new and advanced kinds of systems that incorporate, for example artificial intelligence, network communication and/or advanced dynamic control methods;
- development of methods for the flexible coupling of different analysis programmes, used for the acceleration and systematisation of the search for optima by relying on machine learning and artificial intelligence;
- validation of design assistant systems in various application fields, including the development of benchmark processes to demonstrate the resulting advantages; application fields and design goals may include, for example, the multicriteria optimisation of kinematic properties and the dynamic behaviour of mechanisms, robots and flexible multibody systems, the choice and design of control strategies for mechatronic systems, and the robustness of designs with respect to aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties;
- additionally, in the second funding period, a focus can also be on re-usage of already available data, e.g. from existing measurements, to derive models for design assistants or on model identification from data, especially considering nonlinearities.
Project proposals should ideally address several of these areas. In any case, submitted proposals must clearly put emphasis on design assistant components and comment on the positioning of the project proposal within the framework of the overall research programme, and on its contribution as well as the added value in the above-mentioned areas. Furthermore, it is expected that proposals provide clear visionary aims with a strong connection to specific engineering design questions from mechanics and dynamics. In contrast, projects solely restricted to either theoretical or numerical methods in artificial intelligence, machine learning, optimisation, modelling, surrogate modelling, model reduction, system analysis or pure control engineering will not be supported by this programme. There must be an explicit link to design questions beyond the established state of the art. Consequently, also projects solely focusing on classic single-criterion topology or shape optimisation are excluded.
Within the central coordination project, the different proposed design assistant components will be connected. Every project is expected to support these software activities by sharing and providing modules.
Proposals for the second three-year funding period are now invited. Besides individual projects, joint proposals of two applicants from different research fields are welcome in order to obtain the required high degree of multidisciplinarity. Larger-scale cooperation should, however, develop between the projects of the Priority Programme and not take place solely within individual projects. Therefore, project proposals with three or more applicants are discouraged.
Proposals must be written in English and submitted to the DFG by 8 January 2025. Please note that proposals can only be submitted via elan, the DFG’s electronic proposal processing system.
Applicants must be registered in elan prior to submitting a proposal to the DFG. If you have not yet registered, please note that you must do so by 11 December 2024 to submit a proposal under this call; registration requests received after this time cannot be considered. You will normally receive confirmation of your registration by the next working day. Note that you will be asked to select the appropriate Priority Programme call during both the registration and the proposal process.
If you wish to submit a proposal for a new project within the existing Priority Programme, please go to Proposal Submission – New Project – Priority Programmes and select “SPP 2353” from the current list of calls. Previous applicants can submit a proposal for the renewal of an existing project under Proposal Submission – Proposal Overview/Renewal Proposal.
When preparing your proposal, please review the programme guidelines (DFG form 50.05, section B) and follow the proposal preparation instructions (DFG form 54.01). These forms can either be downloaded from our website or accessed through the elan portal.
The DFG strongly welcomes proposals from researchers of all genders and sexual identities, from different ethnic, cultural, religious, ideological or social backgrounds, from different career stages, types of universities and research institutions, and with disabilities or chronic illness. With regard to the subject-specific focus of this call, the DFG encourages female researchers in particular to submit proposals.
Further Information
More information on the Priority Programme is available at:
The elan system can be accessed at:
DFG forms 50.05 and 54.01 can be downloaded at:
For scientific enquiries, please contact the Priority Programme coordinator:
- Professor Dr.-Ing. Peter Eberhard, Universität Stuttgart, Institut für Technische und Numerische Mechanik, Pfaffenwaldring 9, 70569 Stuttgart, phone +49 711 68566388, peter.eberhard@itm.uni-stuttgart.d
Questions on the DFG proposal process can be directed to:
- Programme contact: Dr. Mirjam Walloth, phone +49 228 885-3256, mirjam.walloth@dfg.d
- Administrative contact: Bettina Rausch, phone +49 228 885-2447, bettina.rausch@dfg.d