EAGER: Cybermanufacturing: Real-Time Scheduling in Networked 3D Printers

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

It is widely believed that the arrival of 3D printers in the 21st century will pave the way for the Maker revolution. This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project is aimed at investigating fundamental theoretical and practical issues in the cloud-based utilization of an ensemble of heterogeneous networked 3D printers. The development of cloud-based scheduling algorithms is expected to be important for several cyber-manufacturing systems. Additionally, the theoretical and practical insights developed for the decentralized 3D printing-as-a-service paradigm may have a significant impact on the manufacturing ecosystem at large. Several students are expected to directly and indirectly benefit from the research and enhanced curriculum. This two-year research effort will focus on developing a fundamental understanding of optimal job assignment in networked 3D printers. Specific objectives of the work include data collection and analysis of heterogeneous 3D print jobs on an existing test bed at University of Maryland, design of optimal routing, batching, and scheduling algorithms to minimize job completion times by efficient decentralized resource utilization, and deployment of the algorithms on a virtual simulator and existing 3D printing infrastructure at University of Maryland.