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

该计划资助的目的是组织和规划建立IUCRC数字工厂创新中心（CDFI）。这笔资金将用于支持一个以行业为重点的研讨会，以收集有关传感器、连接、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。制造业物联网（IoTfM）能够实现数字化工厂，并推动制造业持续的性能改进。设想通过自动化和智能人机交互制造产品的相互关联、自我意识的工厂和流程。与这一愿景相一致，拟议中心的长期目标是通过为行业提供竞争前的基础知识来促进物联网fm的发展和采用，以提高产品性能，提高生产力，促进劳动力发展和经济增长。新罕布什尔大学（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。拟议的规划会议将重点关注四个重点领域的关键知识缺口：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伴随的自适应、基于云的优化和控制系统；2)增强人工智能（AI），促进离散过程和协作机器人等应用在网络物理系统环境中的人机合作；3)协议和互操作性，确保具有时间敏感网络的通信平台的无缝无线连接和数字工厂环境中数据的安全传输；4)自组织系统，代表了组织工厂运营的另一种方式，与高度集中的方法相比，可以增加灵活性、可重构性和稳健性。CDFI设想建立一个学术、工业、国家实验室和国际研究人员之间的合作论坛，并在这一工业重点领域培养下一代科学家和工程师。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。

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.