Digital Automation Systems Design
The vision of the Digital Automation Systems Design Lab is to develop a systems approach to designing automation. We collaborate with researchers across disciplines to solve multi-faceted and complex problems faced by the modern manufacturing industries. The sectors that we work with include aerospace, defence, energy, automotive and SMEs. The lab has extensive expertise in design process, life cycle costing, uncertainty analysis, systems modelling and knowledge management.
The rapid introduction of digital technologies in manufacturing such as collaborative robotics and autonomous systems is exciting but also brings risks and uncertainties on cost, training and safety implications to the work place. The success of automation systems depends on many factors including the business case, human factors, process and product variability/complexity, to name a few. We aim to understand the complex inter-dependencies between various technological, environmental and human factors and translate the knowledge into novel tools and methods that can be adopted by businesses. We embrace digital technologies such as wearables, Virtual Reality and state-of-the-art data analytics and machine learning techniques to explore our understanding of complex processes and relationships in order to build quantifiable and robust models to support the design process.
Our research has benefitted from EPSRC, impact acceleration and industry funding. Recent projects include:
- Manufacturing Technology Engineering Doctorate in Cost Modelling Methods for Novel Factory Manufactured Nuclear Power Plants
- EPSRC platform grant in Embedded Integrated Intelligent Systems for Manufacturing
We have also developed successful international partnerships with PUCPR Brazil and NUAA China for PhD exchange.