Cooperative Agreement W911NF0420009

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) provides $607,412 to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to develop a new mechatronic hardware and control co-design paradigm that overcomes the acceleration-bandwidth trade-off in precision motion systems. The research aims to enable future integrated circuit manufacturing equipment with enhanced throughput by: 1) stiffening flexible dynamics through over-actuation and 2) strategically...

This $183,194 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) supports fundamental research at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) to develop a next-generation process sensing and machine learning architecture for improved machine tool anomaly detection and predictive maintenance in manufacturing. The research aims to establish a scientific foundation for more accurate and efficient machine tool health monitoring by discovering the causal...

This STTR Phase I grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) program supports the development of a compact, multi-wavelength interferometric system for real-time, in-situ metrology in high-precision optical manufacturing. The $274,524 project aims to deliver a market-ready, on-machine metrology system that can improve efficiency and accuracy in diamond tool alignment, surface metrology, and overall manufacturing throughput by...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $1,000,000 Cooperative Agreement under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program to ZS Systems LLC to develop a novel manufacturing method for producing high-accuracy, optical encoders. The project aims to establish a pilot capability to cost-effectively manufacture encoders with over an order of magnitude finer fundamental resolution than current methods. This will enable the production of encoders critical for...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Federal Grant Program (CFDA 47.070) award to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) provides $143,555 in funding from March 1, 2025 to February 28, 2030 to develop new machine control methods and software design techniques that blend automated and manual control for digital fabrication technologies. The project aims to enable domain experts to adapt digital manufacturing processes to...

This $116,985 Project Grant award from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) under the Measurement and Engineering Research and Standards (CFDA 11.609) program supports the development of new methods for rapidly assessing the absolute accuracy of robotic manipulators within their workspaces. The key activities include: Developing new sampling methodologies to efficiently explore a robot's workspace and improve its position and orientation accuracies; determining the optimal...

This three-year, $349,999 National Science Foundation project grant supports research at Case Western Reserve University to develop specific energy-based prognosis models for machining surface integrity through integration of process physics and machine learning. Funded under the NSF Directorate for Engineering's Engineering Grants program (CFDA 47.041), the research aims to foster innovation in engineering by improving prediction of machined surface conditions to enable more efficient...

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Directorate (CFDA 47.041) provides $149,999 to the Rochester Institute of Technology to develop new approaches for capturing and transferring tacit knowledge in machining occupations. The award period is from October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2023. Specifically, the grant will support a multidisciplinary team in investigating how artificial intelligence and virtual/augmented reality technologies can help identify,...

This three-year, $298,980 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation, under the Engineering (47.041) federal grant program, supports research at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte related to advanced manufacturing processes for complex optical elements. The research aims to test the hypothesis that material removal mechanisms change at increased cutting velocities when single point diamond machining brittle single...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) grant award of $440,320 to the Regents of the University of Michigan aims to develop innovative online convex optimization methods to improve the performance of high-precision control systems used in a variety of engineering applications. The research is divided into three thrusts: (1) establishing fundamental performance limits for robust disturbance rejection, (2) creating new versions of recursive least squares...