Work in this area has focused on incremental construction and refinement of models to capture user requirements. Major themes considered include: prototyping of educational software, user-interface design, visualisation for mathematics and science and software development for components within reactive systems. Work is currently in progress on automated generation of conventional programs from our prototype models. An evaluation and comparative study of our approach to software development has been sponsored by IBM.
Our modelling approach is well-adapted to the construction of "virtual prototypes" of engineering products that mimic the properties of physical prototypes typically built as a design evolves. Our modelling methods allow the views of many participants in the concurrent engineering process to be represented in a flexible and extensible manner. Particular case-studies include Lathe Shaft Design, Vehicle Cruise Control Simulation, and Sailing Boat Simulation. This research has been supported by the EPSRC. Collaborative work on geometric modelling using our approach has also been sponsored by Matra Datavision.
Concurrent Systems modelling and simulation based on agent-oriented analysis originated from collaborative research with British Telecom in 1986. This has led to the development of models of systems of communicating agents such as: railway design and operation, a simulation of classroom interaction and a simulation of the game of cricket.