SMRT System Inc currently builds and sells a professional system for cleaning clothes. The company seeks a solution that automates the tedious pick and place operation of hanging clothes onto conveyor belt lines. The solution impact is to deliver a more cost-effective solution that yields reduced worker injuries and a more sustainable solution for its customers.

CESMII, the Smart Manufacturing Institute, has developed a Smart Manufacturing Platform��������������� for setting up and operating data contextualization, visualization, analytics, model comparison, and control. The standards for this Platform��������������� are being developed with CESMII������������������s members across the industry. CESMII now has asked NC State to create a Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center (SMIC) to deploy, develop, and demonstrate the Smart Manufacturing Platform���������������. Technical design of the implementation would be by a separate contract with Avid Solutions, a systems integrator in Morrisville, NC. The requested budget for Year 2020 Quarter 1 is the first step to establish NCSU as a SMIC and to connect NCSU������������������s strategic manufacturing testbed assets to CESMII������������������s SM Platform���������������.

This project is collaboration with Atollogy, Inc. (at CA) for their proposal to be submitted to CESMII for possible funding. The proposal titled "SM Profiles for CNC Machining" under the 2020 CESMII Request for Proposal Mod 02, Wave 4. The partnership between the NC State SMIC and Atollogy SMIC in this proposed collaboration will shape new opportunities for both industry and academia to accelerate their digital transformation, IIoT, and analytics innovation initiatives. If funded by CESMII, NC State will be subcontract from Atollogy., Inc.

NCSU serves as the academic part of research and development of this NSF-SBIR proposal to be submitted by SOVE, Inc. (Chapel Hill, NC) to NSF. Nearly all human beings need orthodontic treatment. Approximately 6 million Americans undergo treatment every year, which represents a $30 billion market. Although aesthetic orthodontics is an emerging field in dentistry, only 20% of these patients are treated with invisible appliances. The majority of these patients are adults, which is a very small fraction of the US adult population (327 M estimated in 2018). Many adults will forego necessary treatment because of aesthetics of conventional braces and ineffectiveness and poor comfort of the invisible devices. The lingual bracket-wire system, where the braces are placed on the backside of teeth, is invisible but difficult to operate, with increased oral discomfort, speech impediment, and eating difficulty compared with facial braces. Invisalign (Align Technology, Inc.) is popular but requires visible attachments on the front of teeth and relies in part on reducing tooth size by removing enamel to create space for uncrowding, which can irreversibly damage teeth. Invisalign is only used for a limited range of malocclusions (crowding of teeth). Up to 80% of patients who need orthodontic treatment to improve their oral health and function are not candidates for invisible orthodontics. Our invention, 2Insight�������������������, solves the problems frequently encountered with invisible orthodontic systems by combining a custom lingual attachment and wire with clear aligner therapy, a novel approach that has not been previously utilized. Development of 2Insight������������������� will increase the number of patients who are candidates for invisible orthodontics and improve treatment for existing candidates. The novel, custom lingual attachment of the 2Insight������������������� system is made possible by direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) 3D printing technology. Post-processing techniques to prepare 3D metal printed appliances for intraoral use have not yet been established. SOVE, Inc. will use the funds from this SBIR grant to complete the following aims: 1) Determine a polishing strategy for finishing 3D metal printed surfaces that reduces the surface roughness and creates a passive surface layer that is resistant to corrosion; 2) Evaluate in vitro and in vivo biocompatibility of the DMLS brackets in an FDA-registered independent contract testing laboratory to meet current FDA and international standards. A variety of polishing methods will be explored, including heat treatment, chemical solutions, and tumbling with an abrasive medium. We will collaborate with NAMSA for safety testing of the product.

Intelligent machines are purported to be the back-bone of the cybermanufacturing initiative.Yet, the conventional approach to making a machine ���������������cyber-enabled������������������, is to outfit the machine with an array of multi-modal sensors which is then integrated to the network and enterprise system through communication and computing platforms. To make further development challenging, almost all industrial machine vendors have closed hardware and software architecture which makes it difficult for extensibility and adaptation to a cyber-manufacturing environment. We propose a new architecture, which we term as the ������������������ ���������������Industrial Machine Operating System - iMOS������������������, will be a flexible framework for writing machine software. It will be a collection of hardware configurations, data structures, tools, libraries and semantics to simplify the task of creating a cyber-physical enabled manufacturing machine, designed to operate across a wide variety of manufacturing process platforms.

This research proposal is request funding from National Science Foundation (NSF). The research is a collaborative research with Penn State University (Dr. Jason Moore at Penn State University). The research objectives of this collaborative proposal are to (1) determine how tissue cutting force is related to needle cutting edge geometry, with both fixed geometry and utilizing the novel concept of compliant tool geometry and (2) investigate how laser micro machining and multi-axis wire EDM can be employed to produce small scale intricate needle tip geometries. These two research objectives will aid in the advancement of the Precision Needle Positioning (PNP) machine.

The Digital Manufacturing Commons (DMC) aims to be a collaborative platform connecting individuals, academia, small, medium and large scale businesses on digital data and models within the paradigm of integrating product lifecycle processes with the digital thread. In this proposal, we focus on sharing a large dataset generated from a mill-turn based manufacturing machine and have it streamed into the DMC platform. We also make available a set of apps on the DMC to help users to query, visualize and retrieve interesting snippets from the streamed dataset. In addition, we also make data analysis tools, such as the ability to run time-domain, frequency-domain and time-frequency domain analysis on the dataset. Such analysis metrics will also be complemented by physical relevance with regards to machining processes.

The Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISE) Department at NCSU will collaborate with Duke University Medical Center?s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Durham Veterans Administration Medical Center (VAMC) to investigate novel design strategies to virtual reality (VR)-based haptic simulations for retraining impaired motor functions and training new fine motor skills in veterans (medics) with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Consideration of critical applications, like motor skill training, in haptic simulation design is expected to promote effective design decisions for human performance. This research will involve use of two VR haptic simulators developed by the ISE Department, including drawing and surgical simulation devices. The simulations will be defined in terms of: (1) the type and resolution of (medical) data sources used for virtual object modeling; (2) the type of virtual surface/tissue models used for force representation; and (3) the approach to graphic and haptic rendering of the simulation. The affect of these specific simulation design parameters on user psychomotor performance and associated brain structure changes will be examined. Subjects will undergo: (1) a battery of standardized motor-performance test; (2) baseline performance testing on the VR drawing task; (3) baseline performance testing on the VR haptic surgical task; (4) performance in a fMRI scanner of a motor task (compared with a control task) in order to examine blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) activation of brain regions mediating motor control; (5) a series of rehabilitative or motor training sessions using the VR haptic simulators; and (6) post-therapy motor and simulator testing, as well as follow-up fMRI scanning. Behavioral indices of motor recovery and neuroimaging of brain regions mediating motor performance are to be used to provide evidence of the effectiveness of haptic simulation design and rehabilitation efficacy. We expect: (1) haptic-simulator experience will improve fine-motor control and constructional praxis; (2) experience with a haptic simulation design based on motor skill training demands and human performance metrics will accelerate skill development; (3) experience on the drawing-simulation device to generalize to improved performance on the surgical-simulation device (and vice versa); and (4) brain blood-flow to increase in regions mediating motor control. The work is expected to contribute to fundamental knowledge regarding: (1) design of computer graphics and haptic rendering; (2) interventional approaches to human motor skill development with haptic simulation; and (3) brain-behavior relationships governing motor output.

This project is focused on the initial bridging of two currently separate research domains one of regenerative medicine and one of manufacturing engineering. The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) is one of the leading research institutes in developing methods for growing replacement tissue and organs for human implantation. WFIRM and North Carolina State University's Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (NCSU-DISE) seek to accelerate the translation from experimentally oriented production to commercially economical tissue and organ transplants. These two very different research partners will collaborate on initial research to transform experimental laboratory processes into the industrial processes necessary to enable economic production of regenerative medical products. The focus in this initial effort will be to translate the recipes and protocols used in the early production of regenerative tissue and organs into manufacturing engineering terms. The major result of this early bridging research will be translating the biology and medical requirements that have been developed at WFIRM for one specific organ into the kinds of engineering process definitions and resource requirements needed to develop full scale manufacturing. Formal engineering models that will explicitly define the resource requirements for the bio-reactors used to produce tissue and organs will be developed. Process models characterizing the transformations that take place outside as well as within the bio-reactors will also be developed. The intent of the formal model development is not simply to chart the current methods used to produce regenerative products but rather to define the basic transformations that take place as well as to try to identify early constraints on the resources and process methods used in their manufacture. These process models will then become a key resource in developing manufacturing system model of efficient production systems for regenerative products. Broader Impact: The impact of this far reaching. To cite Dan Barrett from Inside Higher ED (January 5, 2011), Advances in medicine and biotechnology -- from the sequencing of the human genome to the development of small chips to detect cancer in the bloodstream -- were driven largely by scientists coming together from diverse disciplines to work on common problems. But a blue ribbon panel said here Tuesday that these advances also signify something larger: the creation of a new model -- dubbed "convergence" -- in which engineering and physical sciences, among other disciplines, join forces with the life sciences. This project provides early convergence of regenerative medicine and manufacturing engineering, and establishes a foundation for a much more ambitious research agenda. Intellectual Merit: This proposal focuses on a critical health care issue facing the aging American population ? that is the critical problem of diseased tissue and organs that every year result in extraordinary medical expenditures, and that take thousands of lives. The merit of the research is bridging two very disparate disciplines so that major inroads into the development of economically practical and safe organ transplants can be made possible. This work will not resolve this problem but will provide the impetus and necessary knowledge base for further research.

The project addresses the production of a new type of product ? the manufacture of human tissue and organs. The project consists of groups of domain experts at Wake Forest's Institute of Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) and North Carolina State University's (NCSU's) College of Engineering that have come together to work collaboratively to assess, document and understand the current state-of-the-art for manufacturing regenerative medicine products. The primary focus of the proposed research is to use the knowledge base developed at WFIRM to define production requirements for the creation of tissue and organs and use those requirements to define and organize production systems that can produce living products safely, efficiently and affordably. The production system requirements will include: flow patterns, product requirements, process requirements (including FDA) and inventory and materials requirements. These components will be analyzed so that new system concepts for volume manufacture of tissues can be proposed. The manufacturing system design must be scalable to produce lots of size one efficiently and with appropriate quality and traceability in a cost effective manner while understanding the inventory and supply chain of this industry. The project will also address technological development requirements and other manufacturing system tools necessary for successfully achieving this vision.