A physics-based virtual environment for enhancing the quality of deep generative designs

In this paper, we present a method that uses a physics-based virtual environment to evaluate the feasibility of neural network-based generated designs. Deep learning models rely on large training data sets that are used for training. These training data sets are typically validated by human designers that have a conceptual understanding of the problem being solved. However, the requirement of human training data severely constrains the size and availability of training data for computer generated models due to the manual process of either creating or labeling such data sets. Furthermore, there may be misclassification errors that result from human labeling. To mitigate these challenges, we present a physics-based simulation environment that helps users discover correlations between the form of a generated design and the physical constraints that relate to its function. We hypothesize that training data that includes machine validated designs from a physics-based virtual environment will increase the probability of generative models creating functionally-feasible design concepts. A case study involving a generative model that is trained on over 70,000 human 2D boat sketches is used to test the hypothesis. Knowledge gained from testing this hypothesis will provide human designers with insights into the importance of training data in the resulting design solutions generated by deep neural networks.