UB-led team advances cyber-manufacturing systems with $2.3 million NSF grant – UB Now: News and views for UB faculty and staff

A UB-led investigate workforce is operating to modernize manufacturing programs, bringing the sophisticated world wide web of measures and procedures concerned in building commercial items below the watchful eyes of laptop units that assure improved efficiencies.

The do the job, which is funded by a $2.3 million Countrywide Science Foundation grant, aims to aid an array of industries — together with semiconductor production and 3D printing — by improving upon top quality, creation and performance.

“A business products is the conclude outcome of a extended chain of interwoven measures that may well span geography, industries and various manufacturing processes,” claims Hongyue Solar, the grant’s principal investigator and assistant professor of industrial and techniques engineering.

“Each step could be optimized, but that does not normally signify it’s for the better very good of the all round manufacturing method,” he provides. “What we’re performing is creating an analytical framework that connects and coordinates all these procedures. The finish end result will be a cyber-actual physical program that works by using synthetic intelligence and other applications to optimize and ultimately make improvements to manufacturing methods.”

The job aligns with UB’s strategic ideas to be a around the globe leader in state-of-the-art manufacturing, such as initiatives to progress Business 4., which is a expression utilized to explain a fourth industrial revolution that is made up of very smart and interactive production ecosystems that integrate merchandise design, output and logistics.

The function also supports UB’s efforts to progress the larger Buffalo area’s economy.

Co-principal investigators from UB include things like Wenyao Xu, associate professor of laptop or computer science and engineering, and Chi Zhou, affiliate professor of industrial and devices engineering. The two Sunlight and Zhou are affiliated with UB’s (Sustainable Manufacturing and Innovative Robotic Systems (Intelligent) group of excellence.

Extra co-principal investigators include things like Rong Pan, affiliate professor of computing and augmented intelligence, and Guilia Pedrielli, assistant professor of computing and augmented intelligence, the two from Arizona State University.

The framework, which the group is contacting STREAM, involves the use of artificial intelligence, simulation and other systems. It will make a general public on-line repository the place researchers and sector experts can share facts and their ordeals relating to knowledge, types, simulators, controllers, analytics and empirical reports.

Also, the challenge consists of three interconnected research jobs:

• Developing software package that permits effective conversation and computing in cyber-production devices.
• Building a modeling technique to obtain an accurate and successful approach good quality regulate.
• Creating a simulation and generation manage process for steady enhancement of good quality, manufacturability, and productiveness of long run multistage and dispersed producing techniques.

In the semiconductor production approach, for case in point, Solar states there are several dependent methods.

“This incorporates tens of levels, such as crystal progress, ingot slicing, wafer lapping and sharpening, lithography, etching, chemical mechanical planarization,” he claims. “These levels have robust dynamics and dependencies. The operations at downstream stages are impacted by functions at upstream levels, good quality-sensible and productiveness-clever.

“For occasion, many lapping machines will need to collaboratively approach hundreds of wafers from ingot slicing, and the authentic-time course of action and generation info of machines are interdependent and jointly determines the system’s overall performance,” he adds.

As section of the challenge, researchers will build new outreach and workforce advancement pursuits for K-12, undergraduate and graduate students. They also will do the job with experts in the subject of production.

These study success, Solar claims, may perhaps be integrated in university curriculum for state-of-the-art manufacturing, architecture design, equipment finding out, simulation, and process management and optimization.

The grant is part of NSF’s Long term Producing Analysis Grant CyberManufacturing challenge. It is jointly funded by the agency’s Division of Laptop or computer and Community Programs in the Directorate for Laptop and Facts Science and Engineering, and the divisions of Civil, Mechanical and Production Innovation, and Engineering Instruction and Facilities in the Directorate for Engineering.