Planning: E-RISE: Future Autonomous Manufacturing Ecosystem of Alabama (FAME-AL)

This goal of this project is to conduct planning activities that will support a future four-year E-RISE RII project on the topic of future autonomous manufacturing enabled by dexterous heterogeneous robotics and advanced manufacturing (FAME-AL). The Principal Investigator (PI) is leading a team in planning activities for the subsequent E-RISE RII proposal and anticipates that the following institutions will collaborate on the project and participate in the planning activities: University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, Auburn University, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama A&M University, and Tuskegee University, with industry partnerships with Airbus, Mercedes-Benz, GE Aviation, and Titomic, Ltd, a cold-spray additive manufacturing company. The planned infrastructure survey and site visits across Alabama institutions and industries will assess the state’s fabrication, assembly, manufacturing, and testbed capacity, revealing current equipment and personnel gaps to be used to define the research targets and the scope of the future FAME-AL project. The comparative workforce analysis, which will be conducted across universities and community colleges, will generate first-hand data on the divergence of Alabama’s educational pipeline from the competencies that autonomous manufacturing demands. The visits to E-RISE projects outside of the state will help map Alabama’s position in the national research landscape and identify which autonomous manufacturing problems Alabama’s aerospace, automotive, and space industrial bases should support in the forthcoming four-year E-RISE RII proposal. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.