This Future Manufacturing (FM) project is to establish a research community of interest with the aim of expanding cybermanufacturing capabilities in the machining sector. Machining is an important manufacturing process, touching upon literally every portion of the manufacturing sector, including automotive, aerospace, medical products, defense and many others; as such this award directly impacts American economic welfare and national security. The project will convene meetings with the machining industry, engineering professional societies, and academia on the future of machining and manufacturing science and engineering and will conduct targeted webinars led mby participating members aimed at creating a broad foundational knowledge base encompassing diverse expertise. The project includes a subcontract to the National Center for Defense Machining and Manufacturing to coordinate the development of a research roadmap that focuses, prioritizes and drives research on cybermanufacturing topics in machining. Samples of research topics include physics-guided machine learning, augmented reality and the human/machine interface, and democratization of manufacturing. The identified reseach directly aligns with four of the NSF Big Ideas: Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier, Convergence, Harnessing the Data Revolution, and NSF Includes.
This project on cybermanufacturing in machining brings together a consensus group made up of industry, government and academia to focus on next-generation topics that can revolutionize the machining sector. Central to this objective is ensuring that defective parts are not produced and that the provenance of parts is known. The project will address the use of physics-based models coupled with machine learning approaches, gamification of controllers, the wider use of Big Data, and cyber-physical systems. In addition, machining will be made more efficient through use of augmented reality tools and enhanced computer integration across the entire design and manufacturing chain. The project includes development of coursework at the undergraduate and community college levels to promote cybermanufacturing in the machining sector.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
