CAREER: Robust Geometric Design of Mechanisms for Interaction with Uncertain Environments

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Many tasks are difficult to automate due to high levels of uncertainty in key task details, such as the shape or size of an object to be manipulated or the operating environment. Even when it is possible to design a robotic system to complete such a task, the resulting system can be too costly and/or lack the robustness required for industrial use. For example, produce picking remains a labor-intensive endeavor for the agriculture industry because variability in the operating environment and fragility of the produce have thus far prevented the design of an economical mechanized solution. Other examples can be found in numerous industries, including semiconductor manufacturing, healthcare and biomedical engineering. This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award supports fundamental research to advance mechanical systems design in this setting. The research will lead to a new geometric design methodology that results in robust mechanical systems and motion paths for uncertain operating environments and manipulating uncertain objects. Research outcomes will advance national health and prosperity by impacting industries such as manufacturing, agriculture and healthcare. An innovative educational program will create a cross-disciplinary research-oriented course for lower division undergraduates at a Minority Serving Institution, engage female high school students through a robotics-themed summer program and develop activities to facilitate the transfer of underrepresented community college students to four-year engineering degrees.This CAREER award applies robust geometric design principals to mechanical systems to explain complex motion in mechanism-object/environment interaction and uncertainty: two critical foci not explicitly captured in existing design methodologies. In this context, uncertainty refers to variations in the object/environment geometry and/or in the realizable mechanism motion paths. The results will yield a novel framework for the design of mechanisms for interaction with uncertain objects/environments. This will be accomplished through a general mechanism-environment contact geometric model formulation and its validation. The design framework will be assessed through designing and experimentally testing industry-related showcase prototypes in the areas of mechanical and biomedical engineering. The central hypothesis is that incorporating mechanism-environment interaction and uncertainty conditions into the design task formulation results in a robust design methodology that is better than existing approaches.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.