EAGER/Cybermanufacturing: Modular System Design for CyberManufacturing of Customized Apparel

The apparel industry is of critical importance to the US and worldwide economy in terms of investment, revenue, trade, and employment. Despite the economic uncertainties and fluctuations, the global apparel industry continues to grow at a healthy pace and is expected to reach approximately $3.2 trillion dollars in 2015 with an estimated annual growth rate in excess of 4 percent. The U.S. apparel market is the largest in the world, comprising about 28 percent of the global market. While customized apparel is highly desirable, customized clothing currently comprises only 2 to 3 percent of the apparel market, due to high manufacturing cost, which includes significant human labor. This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project plans to design an end-to-end system architecture and a proof-of-concept prototype application software for affordable individualized clothing and personalized manufacturing. The resulting approach can facilitate high-quality yet low-cost individualized apparel, enable innovative product design and/or manufacturing, and potentially transform the fashion industry. The resulting scientific and technological advances have the potential to improve the status of the US apparel manufacturing industry in the world market. Complementing these research goals, we will introduce a new graduate course on cyber-manufacturing, release example software systems, and organize workshops related to cybermanufacturing. The multi-disciplinary curriculum development and cyber-engineering research training, featured through the departmental outreach and the University science fairs, can also help attract underrepresented groups, especially women and minority students, to computer science and engineering.

This early-concept exploration focuses on providing a novel computational framework and software system architecture required to solve challenging cyber-manufacturing of customized apparel by offering an alternative, clean, green, and resource-efficient approach. It will feature a seamless integrated system that can provide real-time, customized design of apparel with human-in-the-loop prototyping, virtual testing, and intelligent manufacturing. The prototype system will consist of new, simple-to-use 3D body measurement systems on portable devices, real-time pattern selection, interactive cloud-based design optimization, reliable visual inspection, predictable virtual try-on, and adept fabrication with different fabric materials. The overall project contributes to building a scientific foundation, system framework, and computational principles to integrate different constitutive models, by linking the computational processes of low-cost sensing, simulation analysis, design optimization, to the agile, rapid cybermanufacturing of a customized product, thereby providing cross-cutting scientific advances.