Seminar: Reconfigurable Systems: The Role of Dynamics and Control

Abstract:

We live in an engineered world, where technologies rapidly become obsolete, and which can easily be disrupted by external events such as world markets, disasters or political strife.  Can engineers design systems that evolve in the face of such pressures, and develop technologies that can be reconfigured to the new circumstances. This talk introduces the principles behind reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS), which provide exactly the manufacturing functionality and capacity needed, exactly when needed. Examples are presented to highlight the role that dynamics and control plays in designing systems to be more reconfigurable. These examples include optimal capacity management in an RMS, dynamics of a reconfigurable machine tool, a reconfigurable stamping control system, as well as methods for co-design of an artifact and its controller and for component swapping modularity in controller design. The talk concludes with an overview of reconfigurable systems research and possible future trends.

About the Speaker:

A. Galip Ulsoy is the C.D. Mote, Jr. Distinguished University Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the William Clay Ford Professor of Manufacturing at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received the Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley (1979), the M.S. degree from Cornell University (1975), and the B.S. degree from Swarthmore College (1973). His research interests are in the dynamics and control of mechanical systems. He has received numerous awards, including the American Automatic Control Council's 1993 O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award, the 2003 Rudolf Kalman Best Paper Award from the J. Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control, the 2008 Albert M. Sargent Progress Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), the 2008 Rufus T. Oldenburger Medal and the 2013 Charles Russ Richards Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).  He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, received the 2012 Presidential Special Award from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, and the 2014 Hideo Hanafusa Outstandig Investigator Award in Flexible Automation. He is a Fellow of ASME, SME, IEEE and the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC).

Hosted by Professor Chia-Hsiang Menq