EAGER/Cybermanufacturing: Abstractions and Architectures for Open Composable Services

International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

A key element of cloud-based design and manufacturing is the notion of virtualization of software and hardware resources, which allows automated composition and delivery of manufacturing services to diverse communities of makers and supports a variety of manufacturing industries. This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project will investigate new architectures for such composable services in manufacturing that seek to replace problematic and error-prone data translation by open communication and interoperability protocols. If successful, the research will empower standardized open communication between variety of software tools and manufacturing applications. This in turn should enable the virtualization of manufacturing services, leading to significant gains in efficiency, further fueling democratization of manufacturing, and empowering the culture of making. This research seeks to demonstrate feasibility of the new approach by focusing on four specific tasks: (1) identifying key abstractions for modular representation of manufacturing knowledge, including shape, material, and physical information; (2) formalizing these abstractions in terms of computable functions (constructions and queries); (3) developing open protocols for interoperability and composition of services using the identified abstractions and functions; (4) investigating effectiveness of the architecture on selected use-case scenarios. If successful, the results of the research will be used to develop a comprehensive research agenda on abstractions and architectures for open composable services in cyber-manufacturing.