Research Insights

This project is centered around the creation and validation of an innovative digital framework to foster an ethical manufacturing ecosystem where machine ethics, including legality, integrity, and accountability, is mandated throughout the product design-fabrication-service life cycle. In the era of Industry 4.0, manufacturing systems are enhanced with advanced technologies and interconnectivity. While this evolution significantly expands the functionalities and accessibility of manufacturing machinery, it also introduces unprecedented ethical challenges in manufacturing regulation, such as malicious use of customizable fabrication (e.g., counterfeit goods and 3D printed weapons). This project pioneers the exploration of ethical Industry 4.0 and anchors principles of legality, integrity, and accountability as fundamental components in the digital manufacturing ecosystem. Specifically, the team designs and implements a set of computational methods and digital tools to provide ethical assurances spanning each stage of the design-fabrication-service life cycle from design, to fabrication, to service. By leveraging existing research platforms and local manufacturing partners, the ethical framework can be integrated and validated within real-world manufacturing testbeds. This project has multi-dimensional educational and societal impacts. The project can necessitate the inclusion of ethics and regulation compliance promotion within Industry 4.0. Moreover, the project also contributes significantly to the education of the future manufacturing workforce, promotes public awareness of manufacturing ethics, and brings benefits to the US manufacturing sector and general society. This research project explores principles of ethics as new functional components and constructs a digital framework that tackles technical obstacles in ethical Industry 4.0, including intellectual property (IP) protection, data security and privacy, regulation, and compliance. The team investigates and develops an ethical cyber layer, incorporating a set of computational algorithms, architecture, and software, to enhance the legality, integrity, and accountability of the digital manufacturing system. The technical thrusts in this project are threefold: (1) an efficient and robust ethical design checking mechanism using nonlinear matching algorithms for complex 3D digital models imported to manufacturing machines to avoid IP theft and malicious design; (2) ethical fabrication monitoring tools for manufacturing machines via secure computation with high privacy needs, limited annotated samples, and diverse operation conditions; and (3) ethical product tracking to analyze product texture fingerprint and assist the forensics of source machine identification with illegal and non-integrity usage. The validated resources and tools, including advanced models, algorithms, software and test benches, and educational materials, will be publicly available.

Funder: National Science Foundation

Amount: $565,778

PI: Hongyue Sun, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Statistics