We have seen that even after its birth, a cause-and-effect object becomes a thing only when it undergoes a physical interaction with some other object so as to demonstrate its physical reality in a way that satisfies the prescription of form for that type of thing. Since the concept of manufactured part is central to ICODE, when I was performing the research investigations on which I report here, I thought that the first thing which, through physical interaction, would cause a just-born object to become a thing would be a tool applied to make that part. In fact, the most primitive application of a tool in a cutting or shaping manufacturing step was the example that I purposefully chose in the original ICAM ICODE’77 investigation. I used that as illustration in both volumes of the Final Report, as well as the ICODE’77 Movie animation, in which a piece of raw stock is clamped and a cutting tool is applied as one step in "making something.
Upon deeper investigation, however, it became clear that such a cutting or forming operation is not, in fact, the first encounter of a part object with something that forms it into a part. Although (this came to me as a surprise, it should not have been a surprise. D-1: COUPLINGS interpreted in the light of the required primitive input-to-output path which is key to the proper degenerate interpretation of every data diagram, tells the story.
In the case of OBJ/D-1 the required degenerate path is the horizontal one going from gather to use, and this path passes through the boxes named substance, part, and ensemble. Part (box 2) is indeed the central focus of the diagram, and in one sense is the degenerate box for interpreting the diagram, with substance (box 5) and ensemble (box 4) merely being path-makers. But I say that this interpretation is valid only "in a sense," because with respect to the actual creation and making of a part as a thing, the concept of "path-maker" boxes really has no meaning. The path-maker viewpoint can only properly be applied where I originally discussed it, in the derivation of the degenerate case of the pre-birth of a cause-and-effect object.
A part is not a primitive, just-about-to-be-recognized object forming out of nothing. A part is and must be, by its very meaning, always a complete thing. It actually must be created, in actuality. It must be made. Therefore, box 2 of OBJ/D-1: COUPLINGS, which is intended to be such a part in its full meaning, cannot be the degenerate case box of that diagram. Box 5, substance, is the degenerate case box of the diagram. Part (box 2) like ensemble (box 4) are the path-makers. Substance, as an object, must be understood to be substance of the thing, before a part can be made by a tool.
Interestingly enough, this discussion of D-1 shows that the most primitive form of manufacturing is not making a part, for that is quite sophisticated. Instead, the most primitive form of manufacturing is the most primitive form of materials handling -- the gathering of substance as raw material. And notice how our natural-language terminology does make the proper distinctions. The gathering (D-1.5i1) provides the object's substance, presenting that object purposefully as some manufacturing step (<present> 5c1 = 6c2 <affect> to 6o1 <employ> = 5o1 <constitute>) characterizes that substance as the thing, raw <material>, see MP/A0.1i1.
There has been insufficient time and resources in the present effort to prepare and present a completed convincing example of how the very powerful ideas resulting from this analysis of cause-and-effect objects take concrete form in the development of an actual, practical ICODE Methodology. The pathway ahead is quite clear, however, and in order to provide a brief illustration and to connect this material to the aspects of ICODE presented in the previous ICODE’77 Volume I and Volume II reports, we can at least provide the beginning of a simple example. In order to provide a direct tie to the preceding discussion of proper degenerate cases, the example is the most primitive of all manufacturing steps -- the gathering of substance for presentation as raw material.
In order to provide a complete application context for the material-gathering example, we will consider a tiny activity model which analyzes how to Mold a Part. The top level (MP/A0) diagram of this model is shown in Mold a Part. We will assume that there is a furnace, whose temperature can be controlled, containing a mold. Our objective is to scoop some raw material from a pile, dump it into the mold, heat the mold in the furnace to melt and fuse the material, allow it to cool, and then remove the part from the mold using tongs. It is useful to think briefly about the various aspects of the part itself in terms of the Object model discussion we have been through. If the complete life history of the making of this molded part up to the time of its removal from the mold is considered, quite a number of the boxes in the Object model would have been exercised (various boxes from the diagrams resulting from both the SUBSTANCE and PART versions of OBJ/D0, resulting from boxes 5 and 2 of D-1: COUPLINGS). We will not be able to pursue that in detail here, but instead will concentrate on merely the Fill Mold activity, which is detailed in MP/A1. In order to carry out this activity we must fill the scoop, transport the full scoop to the mold, and dump the scoop in such a way that its contents properly fill the mold (see A1). The diagram is so simple as to need no further explanation.
Filling the scoop (A1.1) is further detailed in A11: Fill Scoop (Basic Form). Again, this activity diagram is so simple as to require no elaborate discussion except perhaps to point out that the middle two boxes are connected by a two-way constraint of the scoop enmeshed with the material in the pile in order to make it clear that the position of the scoop in space which is needed for approaching and leaving the pile and approaching the mold can be considered independently of the tipping angle of the scoop which is necessary for filling and dumping. Certainly the example is so simple that there can be no question that A11 does indeed capture a useful analysis of how to fill a scoop with material from a pile.
In order to make the example more interesting as an exercise in tracing through the applicability of ideas drawn from the analysis of the Object model and the couplings between TOOLs and PARTs (OBJ/D0), MP/A11:Scooping Material from a Pile, gives a more complete detailing of Fill Scoop (A1.1). This type of detailing would be particularly appropriate if a vision-controlled robot were to be used to automatically control the filling and dumping action of the scoop. Notice that the purpose served by the various parts of the analysis has been used to isolate three distinct kinds of forces: digging forces, forces, and those implied by scoop motion itself. As the picture indicates, a depth adjustment (A11 .1o1 to c1) provides fine tuning of the aiming direction to select the basic approach to the pile of material. A normalcy condition (2o1 to 2c1 and 2c3) is the primary fine tuning for ensuring that digging forces are applied to slice through the pile rather than be wasteful and disruptive. This same condition (2o1 to 3c2) combined with a tangency condition (3o1 to 2c1) determines the actual path of the rotating scoop through the pile, with efficient use of digging forces to finally arrive at the desired full-scoop angle as the lifting forces (4c3) take over to withdraw the full scoop from the pile for transportation to the mold (A1.1o1 to 2i1).
When these considerations are taken into account, further detailing of the filled-scoop activity is non-trivial. In fact, one of the challenges of effective robot -control design is closely related to this analytic separation of the purposes and functions of interlocking forces and motions into a smooth and continuous pattern. The robot-like appearance of many of the primitive laboratory and production applications stems from the fact that the need for separation for analysis but synthesis for application has not sufficiently been recognized by the robot developers. It is, however, a workable explanation for why motions of living systems clearly are highly refined and not at all robot-like in appearance or results.
I believe that in the long run one of the most important applications of the depth and rigor of ICODE theory will be its reduction to practice in the form of detailed and smoothly-functioning robotics. Again I lack the time or space to elaborate, but anyone who studies deeply the detailed analysis I have been able to present thus far will surely understand the significance of my remarks and why (even though it is a slight diversion perhaps) I elaborate this example by preferring the Scooping version of A11 to the Basic version of A11.
REFERENCES ** = Strong relevance to ICODE; * = Moderate relevance to ICODE.