Abstract
Following an application trend in additive manufacturing and demand for practicality of artificial intelligence in creative tasks, the paper introduces ‘Robot creating robots’ platform to automate rapid prototyping in ‘click and drag’ 3D product design with evolutionary algorithms, in order to search and recommend morphological concepts for a fast-moving consumer goods such as a volumetric container and robot shell design. In the process of the research, the methodology to defining product objective by objective function and determining evolution parameters are identified to enable product engineering organizations to apply this evolution algorithmic platform to virtual simulation and physical prototyping. Comparison of both prototyping approaches directed by machine indicates virtual simulation being less resource-demanding, and a precursor to identify appropriate configuration for physical prototyping, so as to generate better product concepts with the support of human intuition. Machines perform iterations of virtual product simulations followed by multiple physical prototyping cycles to select final solutions while humans define engineering problems and parameterize machines. This culminates to a new procedure for product design and development where humans and machines coexist.