IUCRC Planning Grant: University of New Hampshire: Center for Digital Factory Innovations (CDFI)

这笔规划赠款的目的是组织和规划建立IUCRC数字工厂创新中心(CDFI)。资金将支持一个专注于行业的研讨会，以收集关于传感器、连通性、自动化和企业模型，以及机器学习和大数据技术在改变美国先进制造业方面可以发挥的关键作用的意见。面向制造的物联网(IoTfM)获得了支持数字工厂的能力，并推动了制造业的持续绩效改进。通过自动化和智能人机交互来制造产品的相互连接的、自我意识的工厂和流程是可以预见的。与这一愿景一致，拟建中心的长期目标是通过向行业提供竞争前的基础知识，促进物联网的进步和采用，以改善产品性能、提高生产率、劳动力发展和经济增长。新汉普郡大学(UNH)、北卡罗来纳州立大学(NCSU)和佐治亚理工学院(GT)的合作者将共同创建这个新中心。拟议的规划会议将集中讨论四个主要领域的关键知识差距：1)自我感知过程，为加工、成形和机器人等过程提供集成传感器和配套的自适应、基于云的优化和控制系统；2)增强人工智能(AI)，促进离散过程和Cobots等应用程序在网络物理系统环境中的人机合作；3)协议和互操作性，确保与时间敏感网络的通信平台中的无缝无线连接，以及数字工厂环境中的数据安全传输；4)自组织系统，与高度集中的方法相比，它代表了组织工厂运营的另一种方式，以提高灵活性、可重构性和健壮性。CDFI设想了一个学术、工业、国家实验室和国际研究人员之间合作的论坛，以及在这个工业重点领域培养下一代科学家和工程师的工具。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The objective of this planning grant is to organize and plan for the establishment of an IUCRC Center for Digital Factory Innovations (CDFI). Funding will support an industry-focused workshop to gather input regarding the critical role that sensors, connectivity, automation, and enterprise models, along with machine learning and big data technologies, can play in transforming advanced manufacturing in the US. The Internet of Things for Manufacturing (IoTfM) harvests capabilities to enable the digital factory and drives sustained performance improvements in manufacturing. Interconnected, self-aware factories and processes that manufacture products through automation and intelligent human-machine interactions are envisioned. Consistent with this vision, the proposed center’s long-term objective is to catalyze IoTfM advancement and adoption by providing pre-competitive, fundamental knowledge to industry for the purposes of improved product performance, enhanced productivity, work force development, and economic growth. Collaborators at the University of New Hampshire (UNH), North Carolina State University (NCSU), and Georgia Institute of Technology (GT) will join to create this new center. The proposed planning meeting will focus on critical knowledge gaps in four thrust areas: 1) Self-aware processes that contribute integrated sensors and accompanying adaptive, cloud-based optimization and control systems for processes such as machining, forming and robotics; 2) Augmented artificial intelligence (AI) that promotes human-machine cooperation in a cyber-physical system environment for applications such as discrete processes and cobots; 3) Protocols and interoperability that assure seamless, wireless connectivity in communication platforms with time-sensitive networks and the secure transfer of data within the digital factory environment; and 4) Self-organizing systems that represent an alternative way of organizing factory operations for increased flexibility, reconfigurability and robustness in contrast to highly centralized approaches. CDFI envisions a forum for collaborations among academic, industrial, national laboratory, and international researchers and a vehicle for educating the next generation of scientists and engineers in this industrial focus area.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.