PAL - Current Research

The geometry of 3-D parts and assemblies plays a fundamental role in mechanical design and production. Traditionally, geometric information has been conveyed by engineering drawings (blueprints), but these, and their electronic analogs used in most CAD/CAM systems, suffer from major deficiencies. Solid modeling is widely recognized as the technology of the future, because it provides unambiguous computational means to represent solids.

The research conducted at the Automation Lab is focused on geometric reasoning and its applications in intelligent systems for the design, analysis, manufacturing, inspection and assembly of discrete goods. Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques are being used, together with computational geometry algorithms. Specific research topics include the following:

• Feature recognition. Integration of feature based design and feature recognition; Incremental feature recognition (feature model conversion); Modeler-independent feature recognition in a distributed environment.

• Automatic inspection planning and programming. Generation of dimensional inspection instructions for measuring equipment such as CMMs (coordinate measuring machines) from geometric models that include tolerancing information.

• User interfaces for CSG modelers. Graphic user interfaces that do not require boundary representations and can support octree or ray casting machines.

• Computational tools, integration, and Engineering Environments. Object-oriented geometric tool kits; modeler-independent application programming interfaces. Prototype Engineering Enviroments, which are integrated CAD/CAM systems, analogous to Programming Environments, to support the entire product life cycle; distributed modeling systems.

• Fixturing. Automatic design of fixtures using modular components.

• Molecular robotics. Direct mechanical manipulation of nanometer-scale molecular structures.