Conceptualization of interdisciplinary engineering activity

The paper proposes an approach to the algorithmic description of engineering creativity processes based on the concept of affordance as a perceived human ability to interact with an object in a certain way. The purpose of the proposed approach is to stimulate engineering creativity by building correct analogies and projections between living and technical systems when conducting interdisciplinary research, for example, at the intersection of medical and technical sciences. Two properties of engineering activity that facilitate the evolutionary development of its products are considered: pre-adaptation of elements of technical solutions and reciprocity of inventions. Pre-adaptation is achieved by parameterizing engineering solutions due to, for example, distributed architecture and service orientated architecture. Pre-adaptation is facilitated by the widespread use of active software services. The desire to ensure this property adjusts engineering activity towards maintaining continuity and rationality. Reciprocity is achieved by dividing the functional purpose between design elements or software components and implementing mechanisms for suppressing some elements in the presence of activity of others. This principle is relevant for distributed software systems with high autonomy of components, for example, based on multi-agent technologies, as well as for heterogeneous systems providing for human-computer interaction with elements of artificial intelligence. The correspondence of these properties to the operations of logical addition and opposition of affordances, respectively, is shown. The definition of affordance as an independent concept in the ontology of the subject area allows for the evolutionary nature of the process of developing engineering solutions. Semiosis of affordance is reconsidered and reissued as an apperception of the use case. In the predicative form, the pragmatic rule can be designated by a conjunction of conditions for the actor: the presence of a goal of action in the given conditions, the presence of the actor’s will to achieve this goal and the presence of experience in achieving similar goals in a certain class in a certain socially known way; and conditions for the object: the presence of a structural element (one or more) that allows it to be attributed to a certain class of use cases, an appeal to the external appearance of the structural element to a socially known way of use and designation of the object by an indicator or a form. Application of the proposed concepts in practice is of practical use in education when implementing training programs at the intersection of sciences, for example, in medical engineering, as well as in industry when automating decision support for information support of engineering activities.