IUCRC Planning Grant: North Carolina State University: Center for Digital Factory Innovation (CDFI)

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.