CAREER: A Theoretical Framework for the Conceptual Design of Compliant Systems

这个教师早期职业发展（Career）项目的研究目标是为推进兼容系统概念设计的最新技术提供一个理论框架。这项工作的目标是：(i)为柔顺机构的概念生成开发一种动静力综合理论，（ii）通过基于全局收敛多项式求解器的计算算法寻求其整个解决方案，从而获得对柔顺机构设计问题的基本理解，以及（iii）探索虚拟现实（VR）环境在柔顺机构交互设计中的应用。教育目标是通过将虚拟现实引入不同层次的设计课程、创新挑战暑期课程和独特的虚拟现实演示日计划，激发K-12、本科生和研究生学习工程学科的兴趣。如果成功，这项研究将产生一套概念设计工具，克服现有方法的不足，并在兼容机制的设计中实现功能到形式的自动转换。这些工具将提高工业设计用于制造、机器人、汽车和国防等领域的高性能兼容机器设备的能力。反过来，这将有助于美国保持其经济领导地位，并保持其在高科技工作岗位上的份额。这一教育计划将改变儿童对工程师的刻板印象，吸引更多追求工程学科学位的高中生，并为工业培养具有全球能力的设计工程师。

The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project is to provide a theoretical framework for advancing the state-of-art of the conceptual design of compliant systems. The goal of this work is to (i) develop a kinetostatic synthesis theory for the concept generation of compliant mechanisms, (ii) gain a fundamental understanding of compliant mechanism design problems by seeking their entire solution via computational algorithms based on globally convergent polynomial solvers, and (iii) explore the use of virtual reality (VR) environments for the interactive design of compliant mechanisms. The educational objective is to stimulate the interests of K-12, undergraduate and graduate students in learning engineering subjects through the introduction of virtual reality to different levels of design courses, an Innovation Challenge summer course, and a unique Virtual Reality Demo Day program.If successful, this research will result in a set of conceptual design tools that overcome the shortfalls of existing approaches and enable the automatic function-to-form transformation in the design of compliant mechanisms. These tools will increase the ability of industry to design high performance compliant machine devices used in the fields of manufacturing, robotics, automobile and defense etc. This in turn will help the U.S. maintain its economic leadership and sustain its share of high-technology jobs. The proposed educational program will change the stereotypical image of engineers in young children, attract more high school students pursuing degrees in engineering disciplines and educate globally competent design engineers for industry.