This grant will provide travel support for a group of approximately 20 students from the United States to attend the 2014 International Symposium on Flexible Automation to be held in Kobe, Japan on July 14-16. The Symposium will consist of three days of technical presentations, panel discussions, and keynote speeches, followed by post-symposium technical tours of major university research laboratories and industry production facilities in Japan. The focus of panel discussions will be on Green Innovation in Flexible Automation. Some of the organized sessions include Sustainable Green Engineering, Design and Control for Electrified Vehicles, Manufacturing Systems, Production Planning and Scheduling, Digital Design and Digital Manufacturing, Machine Tools and Cutting, Precision Machinery System and Micro/Nano Technologies, Machine and Robot Control, Medical/Nursing Applications and Bio-manufacturing, Additive Manufacturing, Simulation and Computer aided engineering, and Agricultural Machine and Plant Factory.
This grant will stimulate technical discussions between students from US institutions and world-renowned researchers in the field of flexible automation, allowing the students the opportunity to network with researchers and students from other countries to forge future international collaborations. Other benefits to the U.S. students attending the 2014 International Symposium on Flexible Automation include the knowledge gained from the technical presentations and discussions on the various processes, systems, and underlying principles of flexible automation, as well as the panel sessions focusing on green innovation in flexible automation. The students will gain first-hand knowledge of the current state-of-the-art in the research, development, and implementation of flexible automation technologies in Japan via tours to various university research laboratories and industry production facilities following the Symposium.
The outcome of this project was that partial funding was provided to six graduate students, three of whom are female, to attend the 2014 International Symposium on Flexible Automation (ISFA) in Hyogo, Japan. The ISFA was first held in Osaka, Japan in 1986 to foster closer collaborations between researchers in Japan and the United States in the field of flexible automation. This symposium is held every two years, the location rotating between Japan and the United States. At this conference the graduate students had the opportunity to present their research results. One student presented his results on the development of a hybrid manufacturing system that integrated fused deposition modeling and micro machining, and utilized machine vision. Another student presented his results on a systematic methodology for identifying low-order dynamic models in a laser metal deposition process. A third student presented her results on sustainable production using advanced manufacturing technologies. Optimizing CAD-based toolpaths in an accumulative double-sided incremental forming process was the focus of a fourth graduate student. Another student investigated a methodology for populating machine tool compensation table using volumetric error measurements and the sixth student presented her results on the influence of process parameters on the microstructure of 316L stainless steel when processed with the Laser Engineered Net Shape process. The graduate students were also able to network with their peers and senior colleagues and participate in post-symposium technical tours to major university research laboratories and industry production facilities in Japan.
