Keynote Talks
High Value K-based Manufacturing: addressing the new Industrial Revolution challenge
Professor Francesco Jovane, Technical University of Milan, Italy
Manufacturing – in broad terms – covers from products, to processes sustaining products life cycle, to enterprises and their business models, across more than 20 sectors. Manufacturing generates wealth, directly and through services, and, hence, jobs and is fundamental for sustainable development. Globalisation is activating a new Industrial Revolution, leading to a new world distribution of production and markets, thus affecting Manufacturing in every Country, economical Region. New Emerging Countries are taking a great advantage, as they can exploit their low labour cost. Advanced Countries find increasingly difficult to compete on this ground. They ought to move to a new, High Value, K-based Manufacturing, enabling economical and sustainable development. To this end, the European Manufuture Initiative was launched in 2003. Its mission is to propose and contribute to implement a strategy - based on Research and Innovation - capable of speeding up the rate of industrial transformation, securing economical and sustainable development in the future knowledge-driven economy. The Manufuture Initiative set up the European Manufuture Platform and promoted related National Technological Platforms. They involve all stakeholders, from Industry to Research and High Education, to Public Institutions. Manufuture 2020 Vision, related Strategic Research Agenda and Roadmaps have been produced. The implementation phase is in progress. A “European Manufacturing Innovation and Research Area“– EMIRA – is emerging. It enables integration and coordination of stakeholders, taking into account regional and national needs and recognising Europe’s wider role in the global RTDI network.
Modeling, analysis and design of dynamical systems with multiple frictional contacts
Professor Vijay Kumar, University of Pennsylvania, USA
This talk addresses the dynamics of multiple frictional contacts and uncertainty that characterize most manipulation, assembly, and part feeding tasks. Our eventual goal is to able to design these processes using computational tools without going through many iterations of physical prototyping. We introduce a hierarchical approach for searching the design space of all possible design alternatives to identify designs that are robust to all uncertainties. Examples of successfully designed part feeders and manipulation plans are used to demonstrate the models, and the analysis and design algorithms.