▢ Six patents: Six issued (granted); one provisional application (see F.2, F.3 below)
▢ Key accomplishments and impacts:
• An original computer-aided methodology for concurrent facility design, later enhanced with a knowledge-based approach for integration;
• Original investigation and development of small-scale, educational physical simulators of robotics in computerized facilities, later applied at over 400 university and industry labs worldwide;
• MOS: The Manufacturing Operating System, a model for intelligent control of distributed factories, applied by manufacturers of DNC, FMS, and for multi- robot cells;
• RTM: The robot-time-and-motion technique for performance estimation and planning of alternative robot models and methods, that has been called by other researchers "the standard approach to robot work measurement", inspired the development of several commercial robot simulators;
• Algorithms, protocols and procedures for optimizing robotic electronics assembly, applied by several microelectronics and communication corporations;
• IRD: Interactive robotic device to aid severely disabled children in learning, independent living;
• Defined Collaborative Control Theory (CCT) and influenced the IFAC Technical Board to adopt it as one of IFAC's key research initiatives;
• Collaboration design principles, theories and tools for the development of Collaborative e-Work, defined by the PRISM Center in 1999 as “Collaborative, computer-enabled and communication supported activities of highly distributed organizations of people, robots, and autonomous systems, for significantly augmenting the abilities of humans at work and of enterprises to cooperate”.
• TESTLAN: Client-server and LAN models of integrated assembly-and-test facilities, implemented by several Indiana companies;
• FDL: A collaborative Facility Design Language and its extension to FDL-CR with automated conflict resolution, integrated in commercial CAD systems;
• CEDM: The conflict and error detection and prevention middleware developed for GM and others, later resulting in three IPDN Patents;
• MDI: Low cost mock drill portal for transportation security training and decision support in Indiana, applied by INDOT and recommended by Indiana DHS.
• FTTP: Fault-tolerant timeout protocol for wireless sensor and RFID networks communication, and TIF, timeout-based information forwarding protocol, resulting in the FTTP-TIF Patent.
• FSN: Facility Sensor Network invention with interdisciplinary Technology and Engineering team at Purdue of MEMS sensor and RFID networks for real-time facility monitoring. Currently applied for greenhouse robotic operations.
• CCT: Collaborative Control Theory (see Nof, ARC, 2007), its principles, tools, algorithms and protocols. Resulting with a book (2015), over 50 publications, and 5 patents. Inspired the Springer ACES book series begun in 2012 (see below in C.10.)
• CI: The Collaboratorium Initiative implementing CCT (development as a School of IE initiative with Discovery Park, 2008-2018) and later implemented as HUB-CI, a HUB for collaborative intelligence over cloud computing. Applied in several industry and research projects.
• TEMPOS: Total Enterprise Management at the Point of Sales/Service, global supply network real-time decision support portals developed for and implemented by Kimberly Clark Corp.
• IPDN-Airport, error and conflict prevention for airport ground and air safety and security, resulting in a patent.
• IPDN-Smart Grid, error and conflict prevention for distribution networks failure prevention and repair, resulting in a patent application.
• RBT: Resilience by teaming design and control framework, applied for resilient supply network monitoring, and supply chain security.
• BMP: Collaborative Best Matching Protocols and algorithms to optimally match multiple sets of entities in manufacturing, logistics, and service. Resulted in a book (2017) and twelve publications.
• CLAP: Collaborative Location-Allocation Protocol for the design optimization of distributed, interconnected supply networks. Resulted in four publications, and applied in several human-robot monitoring and detection systems (in supply chain and in agricultural applications).
• DLOC: Dynamic Lines of Collaboration, network science –based system to optimize cyber-physical disruption response. Resulting in several publications and a book (2021).
• HUB-CI: A HUB for collaborative intelligence, (CI), a distributed network of multi-brain cyber-physical systems for real-time decisions and control of collaborative automation and robotics networks, applied in manufacturing, service, and precision agriculture.
• ARS: Cyber-physical Agricultural Robotic System, integrating mobile cart, manipulator, sensors and HUB-CI for preventing crop loss by early detection, diagnosis, and locating of crop stress. (Winner of a top award by BIRD, the funding agency.)
• C2F: Cyber-Collaborative Factories of the Future, and cyber-collaborative protocols for their machine learning-based harmonization. (Currently part of a collaborative multi-university NSF project, 2018-2023).
• C2W: Cyber-Collaborative Warehouse of the Future, and cyber-collaborative task administration protocols for its competitive design and control. Resulting in several publications and a forthcoming book (2023).
