This award is for support of a cooperative research by Dr. William Wolovich, Division of Engineering at Brown University and Dr. Aytul Ercil, Department of Industrial Engineering at Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. They plan to extend and apply recent advances made in the US and Turkey on implicit polynomials (IP) technology in order to improve the ways manufactured objects are modeled, identified, measured, aligned, designed and fabricated. Specifically, they plan to apply and extend the new IP technologies, including conic-line factorizations and related-point ratios, 3L and PIM fitting algorithms, boundary curve blending procedures, and new scaling and shaping methods to a wide variety of manufactured objects. They will investigate: the use of IP models and their algebraic invariants for rapid and accurate object identification and alignment; 3L fitting of experimental (vision and CMM) data to obtain useful IP models for reverse engineering and metrology; physical fabrication (CAM) of 3D objects modeled using IP equations; new ways of controlling a CMM while maintaining proper tool tip orientations; use of IP curve blending to enhance industrial design, including the various ways that IP curves and surfaces can be scaled and shaped to produce simple and innovative designs; and identification and reconstruction of 3D objects from 2D boundary information. Scope: the U.S. PI is well known and his laboratory is recognized in this field. The Turkish scientist, who also received her doctorate at Brown, is a professor at one of Turkey's best universities. At least two, and possibly three, graduate students from Brown University will have opportunities to work in this international collaboration. They will be joined by a similar number of graduate students from Bogazici University. The two sides have complementary facilities, with Brown offering excellent facilities in the Laboratory for Engineering Man/Machine Systems (LEMS), including workstations dedicated to experiments in 3D object visualization, and a state-of-the-art Chameleon Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) with both mechanical and laser scanning probes. The Industrial Engineering Department at Bogazici is using excellent visual facilities that were developed by Dr. Ercil, and used in collaboration with industrial partners. This proposal meets INT objective of supporting US-foreign collaboration in areas of mutual benefit.
