The goal of this award is to obtain travel funding for students (undergraduate and graduate) participating as finalists in the 2009, 2010, and 2011 ASME Student Mechanism Design Competition. The competition is featured at the Mechanisms and Robotics Conferences, which is part of the ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences (IDETC) & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (CIE). ASME IDETC/CIE is the premier international meeting in the fields of Design Engineering and Computers and Information in Engineering. This event is designed to showcase cutting edge research and accomplishments, and to enrich the educational experience in these fields. The purpose of the Mechanisms and Robotics conference is to advance the understanding of the base of knowledge in mechanism design and robotics that all researchers and educators will collectively draw upon in the years ahead to meet the challenges and realize the opportunities of a globally competitive economy.
A mechanism is defined as any device that transmits a force or a motion in a deterministic way in order to perform a mechanical task. Mechanisms are the skeleton of more complex machine systems. Mechanism design has been and will continue be one of the fundamental techniques that are widely used and needed in industry. The objective of the ASME Student Mechanism Design Competition is (1) to stimulate students' interests in mechanism design and research and (2) to promote advances in research and education in the theory, design and application of mechanisms. Finalists are invited to present their work at IDETC each of the years of this grant. Finalists are judged on the basis of creativity, practicality, integrity of analysis and design methodology, quality of the fabricated prototype, quality of the final report and the conference presentation.
The competition is highly related to the NSF Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI), more specifically the Engineering Design and Innovation (EDI) program which sponsors basic research in engineering design to advance the understanding of the fundamentals of the product realization process. The research of the mechanism community covers a wide range of stages of product realization process, from conceptual design (topological and dimensional synthesis) to optimal design and prototype fabrication. Furthermore, the EDI program is one of the major funding sources for mechanism science research.
