Configuration Modeling, Design, and Analysis

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The research objective of this award is to extend the success of geometric and solid modeling to configuration space modeling. The proposal will develop theoretical foundations and computational infrastructure for configuration modeling and will apply the developed tools to synthesis and analysis of mechanical systems, including mechanism workspace design and analysis, generalized sweeps, moving shape design, and symmetry detection. The six-dimensional configuration space is traditionally associated with the space of configurations of a rigid solid. But a solid itself can be also considered to be a set of configurations, and therefore a subset of a configuration space. This observation removes the artificial distinction between shapes and their configurations, and allows a new formulation of a large class of problems in mechanical design and manufacturing. Efficient and practical computational solutions to the newly formulated problems, relying on modern computer architectures such as graphics processing units, will be developed as part of this research.If successful, this research will lead to major advances in computational design by bringing the full power of configuration modeling tools to solution of the design and analysis problems previously considered computationally infeasible. The expected broader impact of this research is threefold. For the computational analysis and design (CAD) industry, this research will lead to a new generation of computational tools that will significantly improve and enhance their software products. For United States manufacturers, configuration design and analysis is a critical tool in enabling rapid and improved (re)design, flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing, effective cost studies, and driving innovation. For research and education, this research fills a major conceptual gap separating (rigid) solid modeling and configuration modeling that smoothly integrates shape information with physical and virtual motions.