NSF Engineering Research Center for Hybrid Autonomous Manufacturing Moving from Evolution to Revolution (ERC-HAMMER)

“混合自主制造，从进化走向革命”工程研究中心（HAMMER）将通过开发并将新的制造技术转化为工业应用，推进国家目标，以维护美国在先进制造业中的领导地位。同时，该中心将推动新的技术教育，并提供证书，以准备，提高技能，或重新培训相关劳动力，并扩大整个制造业供应链的能力，以满足国家需求。该中心的核心合作伙伴包括俄亥俄州立大学、西北大学、北卡罗来纳州农业和技术州立大学、凯斯西储大学和田纳西大学。他们将与来自70多个行业、教育和技术组织的合作者合作，为敏捷、高性能和质量保证的组件开发和实施新的制造技术。通过基础、应用和转化研究，HAMMER将加速智能自主制造系统的开发和部署，该系统将使用多种工艺来控制材料特性和部件尺寸，以实现快速定制和高性能保证。这些系统将从每次操作中学习，随着时间的推移不断改进自己。重要的是，随着HAMMER致力于培养一批新的工程师和技术人员，它还将积极致力于增强制造业人才管道的多样性，以Fab Labs和Makerspaces的成功为基础，吸引学生并改善成果。特别强调将城市、军事和阿巴拉契亚社区纳入教育管道项目。最终，HAMMER将确保美国的竞争优势，重建美国的工业基础，创造新的高技能、高收入的工作岗位，并通过提供具有成本效益的、本地化的、定制的产品来释放美国人的创造力。HAMMER的主要目标是使用混合（或多工具）制造系统和路径，实现具有新型制造工艺的产品并行设计。这种方法将自动化并极大地扩展实践人类工匠的灵活性和独创性。HAMMER框架将采用能够利用机器人和传感器最新发展的设计，从而产生新颖的融合过程。新的控制、自主和智能方法将指导和学习以前的制造过程。在量化的不确定度范围内，通过理解和预测被加工材料的局部结构和性能，可以保证质量。最终，HAMMER将推进当前的技术状态，将设计、工具、人工智能和计算材料工程统一到一个框架中，从而实现组件的敏捷生产。这些组件将具有局部优化的材料化学、微观结构和性能，这些是目前无法实现的。预计有关系统将随着经验的积累而提高效率和业绩。需要考虑的具体用例包括：1)数控变形序列和设备，以创建复杂的部件，目前可能作为封闭模锻件生产，但缩短了交货时间，提高了性能；2)采用数控变形来局部优化增材制造部件的性能；3)扩展点护理制造的能力，其中包括变形的自动化操作用于快速定制医疗设备，以适应患者的解剖结构。4)开发低成本的桌面培训系统，为学生提供编程、操作和维护新制造系统的实践学习，以及使用增量变形和混合过程创建新物理产品的经验。与工业、教育和技术组织的紧密合作将使HAMMER能够培养从大学预科到实践工程师的各个层次的人员。HAMMER将领导下一代认证标准，以促进相关工作人员广泛采用这些技术。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 Engineering Research Center, Hybrid Autonomous Manufacturing, Moving from Evolution to Revolution (HAMMER), will advance national goals to assert American leadership in advanced manufacturing by developing and transitioning new manufacturing technologies to industry use. Simultaneously, the Center will drive new technical education and provide credentials that will prepare, upskill, or reskill the relevant workforce, and expand capabilities across the manufacturing supply chain to meet national needs. Core partners of the Center include The Ohio State University, Northwestern University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Case Western Reserve University, and the University of Tennessee. They will work with collaborators from more than 70 industries, educational, and technical organizations to develop and implement new manufacturing technologies for agile, high-performance and quality-assured components. Through basic, applied, and translational research, HAMMER will accelerate the development and deployment of intelligent autonomous manufacturing systems that will use multiple processes to control material properties and component dimensions to allow rapid customization and high assured performance. These systems will learn from each operation, improving themselves over time. Importantly, as HAMMER works to develop a new class of engineers and technicians, it will also actively work to enhance diversity in the manufacturing talent pipeline, building on the evidence-based success of Fab Labs and Makerspaces to attract students and improve outcomes. Special emphasis will be focused on including urban, military, and Appalachian communities in educational pipeline programs. Ultimately, HAMMER will ensure this country’s competitive advantage, rebuild the U.S. industrial base, create new high-skilled, highly paid jobs, and unleash American ingenuity by providing cost-effective, local, customized production. HAMMER’s primary goal is to enable the concurrent design of products with novel manufacturing processes using hybrid (or multi-tool) manufacturing systems and pathways. This approach will automate and greatly extend the flexibility and ingenuity of practicing human artisans. The HAMMER framework will use designs that will enable leveraging recent developments in robotics and sensors, leading to novel convergent processes. New control, autonomy, and intelligence approaches will guide, and learn from prior manufacturing processes. Quality will be assured through understanding and predicting the local structure and properties of the material being processed within quantified uncertainty limits. Ultimately, HAMMER will advance the current state of technology to unite design, tools, artificial intelligence and computational materials engineering into a single framework, enabling the agile production of components. These components will possess locally optimized materials chemistry, microstructure, and properties in ways that are not attainable currently. The relevant systems are expected to improve in efficiency and performance with experience. Specific use cases to be considered include: 1) numerically controlled deformation sequences and equipment to create complex components that may be currently produced as closed die forgings, but with reduced lead-time and improved performance, 2) employing numerically-controlled deformation to locally optimize properties in additively manufactured components, 3) expanding capabilities for point-of-care manufacturing wherein automated operations including deformation are used to rapidly tailor medical devices to the patient anatomy, and 4) developing low-cost, desktop training systems that provide students hands-on learning in programming, operating, and maintaining new manufacturing systems, as well as experiences creating new physical products using incremental deformation and hybrid processes. Strong partnerships with industry, educational and technical organizations will enable HAMMER to train personnel at many levels from pre-college to practicing engineers. HAMMER will lead next-generation certification standards to facilitate widespread adoption of these technologies by the associated workforce.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.