The Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute, a member of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, on Wednesday issued its second 2016 Project Call.
The Project Call is a request for proposals across four topics that address three DMDII technology "thrust" areas: intelligent machines, advanced manufacturing enterprise and advanced analysis.
The four topics are as follows:
Low-Cost Robotics and Automation: This seeks robotics and automation solutions that are affordable, reconfigurable, and adaptable, and that exhibit the precision, repeatability, and productivity of conventional automated solutions. They must also exhibit flexibility at a cost that makes them accessible to small and midsize businesses.
Real-Time Optimization of Factory Operations: The objective is to improve factory decision-making by transforming raw data into meaningful and useful information for analysis and decision recommendations. Example analytical tools include online analytical processing, data mining, complex event processing, text mining, predictive and prescriptive analytics, and active performance management.
Seamless Work Flows from Design to Fabrication: The goal is to develop software solutions that significantly reduce the manual input and expertise required to rapidly translate designs into fabricated parts during manufacturing, and thus to fully utilize the capabilities of available machine tools.
Human Systems Integration: The aim is to develop digital and physical technologies to improve human systems integration through data collection and analysis to reduce the costs and inefficiencies that stem from industrial workers performing tasks in environments that do not adequately take into account human size variation or capabilities.
DMDII, a UI Labs collaboration, will host a Project Call workshop on Sept. 8 at the UI Labs Innovation Center for interested parties. Attendees will learn more about DMDII and how to do business with it. Additionally, DMDII encourages manufacturers, technology companies and academic organizations to register their capabilities via an online survey. The information is being collected to expedite collaboration with potential partners. A completed survey is not required to submit a proposal.
Further information, as well as proposal deadlines, is available on the DMDII website.
