This project supports U.S. participation in a U.S.-Indo workshop on manufacturing systems, scheduled to be held in April 1990 in New Delhi, India. The Indian co-organizer is Dr. Rakesh Sagar of the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi. The topics to be covered include: computer-aided design, kinematics, dynamics, simulation, computer graphics, off-line programming, interaction between robotics, control, vision, machine intelligence, parametric programming, variational geometry, artificial intelligence, expert systems, robotics' design, control, maintenance and sensory devices. Other topics related to the operation of the factory of the future would also be included. It is expected that the workshop will result in identifying the appropriate areas where research is needed, the facilities available for that research in the U.S. and in India, and possible cooperative research projects between Indian and U.S. institutions. Scope: The area of manufacturing systems is extremely important to the U.S. for improving its competitivness. It is also important to countries like India who need to build efficient factories as they add to their growing industrial base. There is significant interest in the scientific communities of both countries to develop this multidisciplinary area. The rapid growth in the availability of important tools including inexpensive computers and sophisticated and dedicated software makes that development more exciting and challenging. Both countries stand to gain from bringing their talents and expertise to advance this scientific field.
