9350159 Kurfess The award is for the conduct of research and teaching in the area of precision engineering. Research activities will be focused on precision control, instrumentation, dynamics and large scale data reduction and are motivated by the need to enhance capabilities in advanced high speed metrology. Research issues addressed include control of measurement probe/workpiece surface interaction, precise control of probe motion, and efficient processing of large amounts of data collected during the scanning process. Teaching activities will be focused on control theory and quality assurance, with examples drawn from applications The research should result in a coordinate measurement machine scanning capability of 40 millimeters/second with typical scanning accuracies of 10 micrometers and would be of great value to manufacturers who rely on precision inspection technology. The teaching activities would result in undergraduate and graduate students who are well versed in control theory and its application to precision engineering.
