Automated design of process automation facilities

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12481799-B2
Application number	US-202217678189-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Feb 23, 2022
Priority date	Oct 25, 2021
Publication date	Nov 25, 2025
Grant date	Nov 25, 2025

Abstract

Implementations herein leverage knowledge about historical process automation facilities to automate designing a new process automation facility. A first level design input may be processed to generate a first embedding that encodes design aspect(s) of the requested process automation facility with a degree of detail commensurate with a first level of a hierarchy reflected by design documents typically used to design a process automation facility. The first embedding may be used to find first level reference embeddings that encode design aspects of reference process automation facilities. Second level reference embedding(s) may be identified based on mapping(s) from the selected first level reference embedding(s). Each second level reference embedding may encode design aspect(s) of a respective reference process automation facility with a degree of detail that is commensurate with a second level of the design document hierarchy. Based on the second level reference embedding(s), template design document(s) may be provided.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A method for designing at least part of a requested process automation facility, the method implemented using one or more processors and comprising:
receiving, at one or more input components, one or more natural language inputs; performing natural language processing on the one or more natural language inputs to identify a set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility conveyed in the one or more natural language inputs; based on the set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility, identifying one or more reference process automation facilities that are useable to generate design template documents for the requested process automation facility; identifying one or more additional design aspects of one or more of the reference process automation facilities that were not contained in the set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility; and providing one or more of the identified additional design aspects of one or more of the reference process automation facilities via one or more output devices.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the natural language processing identifies the set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility in a degree of detail that is commensurate with a first level of a design document hierarchy associated with designing process automation facilities, and wherein the one or more reference process automation facilities are useable to generate design template documents for the requested process automation facility at a degree of detail commensurate with the first level of the design document hierarchy.

3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein the design aspects of one or more of the reference process automation facilities are identified at degrees of detail that are commensurate with a second level of the design document hierarchy that is beneath the first level of the design document hierarchy.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the providing includes, based on the identified additional design aspects of one or more of the reference process automation facilities, providing one or more template design documents for the requested process automation facility.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more reference process automation facilities comprise a plurality of reference process automation facilities.

6 . The method of claim 5 , wherein the one or more additional design aspects comprise intransient design aspects that are shared among the plurality of reference process automation facilities.

7 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising comparing a first embedding generated based on the set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility with reference embeddings generated from design aspects of a plurality of candidate reference process automation facilities, wherein the one or more reference process automation facilities are selected from the plurality of candidate reference process automation facilities based on measures of similarity between the first embedding and the reference embeddings.

8 . A system for designing at least part of a requested process automation facility, the system comprising one or more processors and memory storing instructions that, in response to execution of the instructions, cause the one or more processors to receive, at one or more input components, one or more natural language inputs;
perform natural language processing on the one or more natural language inputs to identify a set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility conveyed in the one or more natural language inputs; based on the set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility, identify one or more reference process automation facilities that are useable to generate design template documents for similar to the requested process automation facility; identify one or more additional design aspects of one or more of the reference process automation facilities that were not contained in the set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility; and provide one or more of the identified additional design aspects of one or more of the reference process automation facilities via one or more output devices.

9 . The system of claim 8 , wherein the natural language processing identifies the set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility in a degree of detail that is commensurate with a first level of a design document hierarchy associated with designing process automation facilities, and wherein the one or more reference process automation facilities are useable to generate design template documents for the requested process automation facility at a degree of detail commensurate with the first level of the design document hierarchy.

10 . The system of claim 9 , wherein the design aspects of one or more of the reference process automation facilities are identified at degrees of detail that are commensurate with a second level of the design document hierarchy that is beneath the first level of the design document hierarchy.

11 . The system of claim 8 , further comprising instructions to, based on the identified additional design aspects of one or more of the reference process automation facilities, provide one or more template design documents for the requested process automation facility.

12 . The system of claim 8 , wherein the one or more reference process automation facilities comprise a plurality of reference process automation facilities.

13 . The system of claim 12 , wherein the one or more additional design aspects comprise intransient design aspects that are shared among the plurality of reference process automation facilities.

14 . The system of claim 8 , further comprising instructions to compare a first embedding generated based on the set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility with reference embeddings generated from design aspects of a plurality of candidate reference process automation facilities, wherein the one or more reference process automation facilities are selected from the plurality of candidate reference process automation facilities based on measures of similarity between the first embedding and the reference embeddings.

15 . A non-transitory computer-readable medium for designing at least part of a requested process automation facility, the medium comprising instructions that, in response to execution of the instructions by a processor, cause the processor to:
receive, at one or more input components, one or more natural language inputs; perform natural language processing on the one or more natural language inputs to identify a set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility conveyed in the one or more natural language inputs; based on the set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility, identify one or more reference process automation facilities that are useable to generate design template documents for the requested process automation facility; identify one or more additional design aspects of one or more of the reference process automation facilities that were not contained in the set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility; and provide one or more of the identified additional design aspects of one or more of the reference process automation facilities via one or more output devices.

16 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15 , wherein the natural language processing identifies the set of design aspects of the requested process automation facility i

Assignees

• Yokogawa Electric Corp

Inventors

• Emerson David
• Wake Ichiro
• Clay Patrick
• Nguyen Vien
• Sawahara Hidenori
• Hammer Mark

Classifications

• G05B19/418 Primary

  Total factory control, i.e. centrally controlling a plurality of machines, e.g. direct or distributed numerical control [DNC], flexible manufacturing systems [FMS], integrated manufacturing systems [IMS] or computer integrated manufacturing [CIM] · CPC title

• G06F30/27

  using machine learning, e.g. artificial intelligence, neural networks, support vector machines [SVM] or training a model · CPC title

• G06F2111/04

  Constraint-based CAD · CPC title

• G06N3/02

  Neural networks · CPC title

• G06F30/13 Primary

  Architectural design, e.g. computer-aided architectural design [CAAD] related to design of buildings, bridges, landscapes, production plants or roads · CPC title