CAREER: System-on-Cloth: A Cloud Manufacturing Framework for Embroidered Wearable Electronics

该学院早期职业发展计划（Career）奖将通过研究改善制造业服务的系统，为促进国家繁荣和经济福利做出贡献。可穿戴电子产品广泛应用于健康监测和可穿戴计算，对舒适性、生物相容性和易于操作有着迫切的需求。智能织物、纺织品和服装以及相关制造技术的最新进展为在织物上制造下一代可穿戴电子设备提供了机会。自动刺绣制造现在是个人和企业家都可以使用的工具。刺绣为电子设计提供了巨大的潜力，因为它可以灵活地将所需的图案转移到织物基材上。该项目旨在建立一个云制造框架，将电子产品和设计到制造的转换集成在一个系统中，供客户、制造商、设计专家和开发人员设计和生产刺绣可穿戴电子产品。此外，该项目还旨在扩大K-12、本科生和研究生的参与，为各级学生提供丰富的多学科课堂和非课堂体验，并激发学生对STEM职业的兴趣。这个CAREER项目的研究目标是为刺绣可穿戴电子产品建立一个基于云的制造框架，作为一个可访问的系统-布料平台技术。为实现这一目标，计划开展三项工作：1)通过对刺绣电子器件的物理建模和实验测试，了解导电螺纹和柔性电子器件的物理变化；2)创建电子设计自动化（EDA）软件，通过集成新的电气规则检查（ERC）和设计规则检查（DRC）标准、最佳针迹生成和开放的可穿戴电子产品库，实现从原理图到制造的转换；3)探索具有开放架构、开源代码和友好用户界面的云制造框架，使客户、制造商、软件开发人员以及电子设计专家都可以访问。云制造框架将整合EDA功能、高可追溯性、可靠性和兼容性，供不同的个人和企业家使用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award will contribute to the advancement of national prosperity and economic welfare by researching systems that improve access to manufacturing services. Wearable electronics are widely used in health monitoring and wearable computing and there is a compelling need for comfort, biocompatibility, and easy operation. Recent progress in smart fabrics, textiles, and garments and the associated manufacturing technologies provides opportunities for next-generation wearable electronic devices that are fabricated on cloth. Automatic embroidery manufacturing is now an accessible tool for individuals and entrepreneurs. Embroidery offers great potential for electronic design due to its flexibility in transferring a desired pattern to fabric substrates. This project aims to establish a cloud manufacturing framework that integrates electronics and design-to-manufacturing translation in a system that can be used by customers, manufacturers, design experts, and developers to design and produce embroidered wearable electronics. In addition, this project also aims to broaden participation from K-12, undergraduate, and graduate students, to provide rich multidisciplinary classroom and non-classroom experiences for all levels of students, and to inspire student interest in STEM careers.The research goal of this CAREER project is to establish a cloud-based manufacturing framework for embroidered wearable electronics as an accessible platform technology towards System-on-Cloth. Three tasks are planned to achieve the goal: 1) to understand physical variations of conductive threads and flexible electronics by physical modeling and experimental testing for embroidered electronics; 2) to create Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software that will realize design-to-manufacturing translation from schematics by integrating new Electrical Rule Checking (ERC) and Design Rule Checking (DRC) criteria, optimal stitch generation, and an open library of wearable electronics; and 3) to explore a cloud manufacturing framework with open architecture, open source code, and friendly user-interfaces that is accessible to customers, manufacturers, software developers, as well as electronic design experts. The cloud manufacturing framework will incorporate EDA features, high tractability, reliability, and compatibility for use by a diverse spectrum of individuals and entrepreneurs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.