Enhanced product innovation design approach supported by patent knowledge graph: a novel path completion and retrieval method

Product innovation design based on patent knowledge graph provides an effective means of overcoming the limitations of designers’ experience and supporting intelligent design. However, incomplete design paths and limited design path retrieval often lead to insufficient reuse of latent innovative knowledge during conceptual design, thereby constraining the efficiency and quality of concept generation. To address these challenges, an enhanced product innovation design approach supported by a patent knowledge graph is proposed. First, an attribute-enhanced requirement-function-effect-structure (A-RFES) ontology model is constructed to develop a comprehensive patent knowledge graph. Second, a design path completion approach based on graph data and comprehensive semantic similarity is proposed to uncover potential function-effect-structure mappings within the graph. Third, an innovation-oriented design solution approach combining depth-first and breadth-first search algorithms with the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) is established to facilitate efficient design knowledge reuse and concept generation. Finally, a peristaltic pipeline inspection robot design is presented as a case study to validate the proposed approach. The validation results show that the proposed approach improves the design path completion rate and expert-evaluated design innovativeness compared with the baseline, indicating its effectiveness in improving design path completeness and supporting the generation of innovative concept schemes.