Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Design by Anyone and Build Anywhere (iMOS)

工程研究中心的规划赠款竞争是作为ERC计划内的试点招标运行。 规划补助金不需要作为整个ERC竞争的一部分，但旨在建立团队之间的能力，以规划融合的中心规模的工程研究。ERC的愿景是解决任何人都可以参与产品设计并能够在任何地方构建产品的工程工具的挑战。ERC将研究驱动产品制造的底层网络连接操作系统（iMOS：Internet使能制造操作系统）的基础。该项目设想了中心规模的活动，使人类能够专注于他们与生俱来的创造力，同时有工具来处理将设计意图转化为能够制造的功能齐全的产品模型所需的较低级别的行动。一旦设计完成，这个愿景将使人类能够通过单击交互，让有能力和可用的服务提供商制造产品。该提案需要一种融合的方法，需要制造工程，计算机科学，工业工程，心理学，经济学和商业管理方面的专业知识。这个主题结合了当前在利用数据在21世纪和未来的工作在人类技术前沿的趋同主题。 它将为小公司、企业家甚至学生带来设计、制造和创新。此外，这种建立供应链的方法将更好地利用现有能力，最大限度地减少营销成本和开发供应链的繁琐和令人疲惫的工作。它还具有扩大美国制造业和就业的潜力。这将对美国农村产生影响，使初创企业和少数民族拥有的小企业能够竞争。将工程、制造、计算机科学和行为科学等完全不同的领域整合在一起，将为工程教育提供一个新的范例。该奖项反映了NSF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。

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research. The vision for this ERC is to solve the challenge of engineering the tools for anyone to engage in product design and have the ability to build the product anywhere. This ERC would study foundations for an underlying network connected operating system that drives the manufacturing of products (iMOS: Internet enabled Manufacturing Operating System). This project envisions center scale activities that would enable humans to focus on their innate creativity while having tools that take care of lower level actions necessary to translate design intent to fully featured product models capable of it being manufactured. Once designed, the vision would enable a human to have the product be manufactured by capable and available service providers through a single click interaction. This proposal requires a convergent approach requiring expertise in Manufacturing Engineering, Computer Science, Industrial Engineering, Psychology, Economics and Business Management. This theme combines current convergent themes in Harnessing Data in the 21st century and Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier. It will bring design, manufacturing and innovation to small companies, entrepreneurs and even students. Moreover, this approach to building supply chains will better utilize existing capacity, minimize marketing costs and the tedious and exhausting job of developing a supply chain. It also has to potential to expand US manufacturing and employment. This will have impact in rural America and enable start-up and small minority owned businesses to compete. The integration of widely disparate fields that integrate engineering,manufacturing, computer science, and behavioral sciences will enable a new paradigm for engineering education.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.