TechniquesOakland University is expanding existing student facilities for robotics and manufacturing to create a laboratory for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Manufacturing. Specific hardware acquisitions include a computer workstation with two terminals to support AI development, and two PC-based stations with appropriate data acquisition and control hardware to support AI delivery. Software acquisitions include AI tools for knowledge representation and expert systems (largely contributed by The Carnegie Group, Inc.), object-oriented modeling software for a wide range of manufacturing problems, and necessary support software. These additions permit students to examine the intelligent use and integration of current equipment including a CNC mill, a CNC lathe, a vision system, a robotic manipulator and a CAD/CAM system.This laboratory primarily supports a new course entitled Improving Manufacturing with Artificial Intelligence Techniques but the improvements also benefit existing courses including Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Robotics. Students will learn: 1) to use expert system shells to build diagnostic expert systems for maintaining the lab's devices; 2) to implement neural network algorithms to control machines; 3) to extract features that control a manufacturing device or cell using various learning algorithms; 4) to build hypertext procedure descriptions for the use of manufacturing systems; and 5) to use object-oriented models of manufactured goods, and to apply other AI techniques to the problems of manufacturing. The lab will be one of the first designed to train students in the use of AI techniques to improve existing manufacturing technologies and help generate new ones.
