Is this project an undergraduate, graduate, or faculty project?
Graduate
individual
What campus are you from?
Daytona Beach
Authors' Class Standing
Maissane Aik, Graduate Student
Lead Presenter's Name
Maissane Aik
Faculty Mentor Name
Christopher Cerqueira
Abstract
With the continuous growth of technology and system complexity, systems engineering plays a crucial role in ensuring performance, adaptability, and clarity across interconnected processes. Yet, as modeling tools become increasingly abstract and dependent on digital infrastructures, they have drifted away from the tangible, intuitive ways humans naturally think, communicate, and design. Current modeling approaches often require engineers to navigate numerous diagrams and layers of abstraction. To address the gap, this research will focus on creating a novel systems engineering language that reintroduces tangibility into system modeling. The proposed language will represent system elements as modular blocks that capture structure, behavior, and interaction within an integrated environment. Designed for both immersive 3D Virtual Reality, Extended Reality and adaptable 2D computer interfaces, the language aims to establish the foundational principles for a modeling approach that enhances comprehension, usability, and human-system interaction. The expected outcome of this research is a foundational model that defines how tangibility can be systematically incorporated into systems engineering design. This conceptual work will offer the principles needed to connect human perception with system abstraction and set the stage for future implementation in virtual environments. In the long term, the proposed language is expected to guide the development of an immersive systems engineering ecosystem enabling collaborative and interactive design and exploration of complex systems.
Did this research project receive funding support from the Office of Undergraduate Research.
No
A Tangible Modeling Language for Systems Engineering
With the continuous growth of technology and system complexity, systems engineering plays a crucial role in ensuring performance, adaptability, and clarity across interconnected processes. Yet, as modeling tools become increasingly abstract and dependent on digital infrastructures, they have drifted away from the tangible, intuitive ways humans naturally think, communicate, and design. Current modeling approaches often require engineers to navigate numerous diagrams and layers of abstraction. To address the gap, this research will focus on creating a novel systems engineering language that reintroduces tangibility into system modeling. The proposed language will represent system elements as modular blocks that capture structure, behavior, and interaction within an integrated environment. Designed for both immersive 3D Virtual Reality, Extended Reality and adaptable 2D computer interfaces, the language aims to establish the foundational principles for a modeling approach that enhances comprehension, usability, and human-system interaction. The expected outcome of this research is a foundational model that defines how tangibility can be systematically incorporated into systems engineering design. This conceptual work will offer the principles needed to connect human perception with system abstraction and set the stage for future implementation in virtual environments. In the long term, the proposed language is expected to guide the development of an immersive systems engineering ecosystem enabling collaborative and interactive design and exploration of complex systems.