Ayush Raina, Jonathan Cagan, Christopher McComb
Abstract:
Generative design problems often encompass complex action spaces that may be divergent
over time, contain state-dependent constraints, or involve hybrid (discrete and continuous)
domains. To address those challenges, this work introduces Design Strategy network (DSN), a data-driven deep hierarchical framework that can learn strategies over these arbitrary complex action spaces. The hierarchical architecture decomposes every action decision into first predicting a preferred spatial region in the design space and then outputting a probability distribution over a set of possible actions from that region. This framework comprises a convolutional encoder to work with image-based design state representations, a multi-layer perceptron to predict a spatial region, and a weight-sharing network to generate a probability distribution over unordered set-based inputs of feasible actions. Applied to a truss design study, the framework learns to predict the actions of human designers in the
study, capturing their truss generation strategies in the process. Results show that DSNs
significantly outperform nonhierarchical methods of policy representation, demonstrating
their superiority in complex action space problems.
Keywords:
▶️ Deep learning ▶️ Policy networks ▶️ Order-invariant representation ▶️ Generative Design ▶️ Predictive Models ▶️ Behavior modeling
Comparative evaluation of DSN and Imitation network frameworks for predicting human selected spatial regions. Shaded regions centered around “+” are the two control points of the spatial regions. The concentric circles represent tolerance values of 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, and 1.0