Researchers and innovators have made enormous efforts in developing ideation methods, such as morphological analysis and design-by-analogy, to aid engineering design ideation for problem solving and innovation. Among these, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) stands out as one of the most well-known approaches, widely applied for systematic innovation. However, the complexity of TRIZ resources and concepts, coupled with its reliance on users' knowledge, experience, and reasoning capabilities, limits its practicality. Therefore, we explore the recent advances of large language models (LLMs) for a generative approach to bridge this gap. This paper proposes AutoTRIZ, an artificial ideation tool that uses LLMs to automate and enhance the TRIZ methodology. By leveraging the broad knowledge and advanced reasoning capabilities of LLMs, AutoTRIZ offers a novel approach for design automation and interpretable ideation with artificial intelligence. AutoTRIZ takes a problem statement from the user as its initial input, and automatically generates a solution report after the reasoning process. We demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness of AutoTRIZ through consistency experiments in contradiction detection, and a case study comparing solutions generated by AutoTRIZ with the experts' analyses from the textbook. Moreover, the proposed LLM-based framework holds the potential for extension to automate other knowledge-based ideation methods, including SCAMPER, Design Heuristics, and Design-by-Analogy, paving the way for a new era of artificial ideation for design innovation.

翻译：研究人员和创新者已投入巨大努力开发构思方法，如形态学分析和类比设计，以辅助工程设计的构思过程，从而解决问题并推动创新。其中，发明问题解决理论（TRIZ）作为最知名的方法之一脱颖而出，被广泛应用于系统性创新。然而，TRIZ资源与概念的复杂性，加之其对用户知识、经验和推理能力的依赖，限制了其实用性。因此，我们探索利用近期大型语言模型（LLMs）的进展，采用生成式方法来弥合这一差距。本文提出AutoTRIZ，一种利用LLMs自动化和增强TRIZ方法论的人工构思工具。通过借助LLMs的广泛知识和高级推理能力，AutoTRIZ为设计自动化及基于人工智能的可解释构思提供了一种新颖途径。AutoTRIZ以用户提供的问题描述作为初始输入，经过推理过程后自动生成解决方案报告。我们通过矛盾检测的一致性实验，以及一项将AutoTRIZ生成的解决方案与教科书专家分析进行比较的案例研究，展示并评估了AutoTRIZ的有效性。此外，所提出的基于LLM的框架具备扩展到其他基于知识的构思方法自动化的潜力，包括SCAMPER、设计启发法与类比设计，从而为设计创新的人工构思新时代铺平道路。