Design-OS: A Specification-Driven Framework for Engineering System Design with a Control-Systems Design Case
2026-03-20 • Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Computational Engineering, Finance, and ScienceArtificial Intelligence
AI summaryⓘ
The authors present Design-OS, a simple step-by-step method to help engineers design physical systems like robots or control devices more systematically. This method uses clear specifications to guide both humans and AI through stages from initial ideas to detailed designs, making it easier to track decisions and changes. They show how Design-OS works with two different types of pendulum control systems, proving it can handle different engineering setups. The authors also share their design files publicly for others to use and learn from.
engineering system designspecification-driven designhuman-AI collaborationcontrol systemsrotary inverted pendulumconceptual designrequirements definitionsystematic designtraceabilityworkflow
Authors
H. Sinan Bank, Daniel R. Herber, Thomas H. Bradley
Abstract
Engineering system design -- whether mechatronic, control, or embedded -- often proceeds in an ad hoc manner, with requirements left implicit and traceability from intent to parameters largely absent. Existing specification-driven and systematic design methods mostly target software, and AI-assisted tools tend to enter the workflow at solution generation rather than at problem framing. Human--AI collaboration in the design of physical systems remains underexplored. This paper presents Design-OS, a lightweight, specification-driven workflow for engineering system design organized in five stages: concept definition, literature survey, conceptual design, requirements definition, and design definition. Specifications serve as the shared contract between human designers and AI agents; each stage produces structured artifacts that maintain traceability and support agent-augmented execution. We position Design-OS relative to requirements-driven design, systematic design frameworks, and AI-assisted design pipelines, and demonstrate it on a control systems design case using two rotary inverted pendulum platforms -- an open-source SimpleFOC reaction wheel and a commercial Quanser Furuta pendulum -- showing how the same specification-driven workflow accommodates fundamentally different implementations. A blank template and the full design-case artifacts are shared in a public repository to support reproducibility and reuse. The workflow makes the design process visible and auditable, and extends specification-driven orchestration of AI from software to physical engineering system design.