Our research groups make the foundation of the research in the centre. It is from the research groups we collect the expertise we then link together to tackle the challenges described in our research themes.
Each research group has its own culture and strategy matched to the cutting edge of contemporary science in that area. Within the centre all research themes and projects are collaborations between at least two research groups. Below we provide detailed descriptions of the research, the personnel and contact details.
Systems Engineering Design
Core competence
The research team in Systems Engineering Design is an internationally well recognized and nationally leading research group with strong networks in both academia and industry. The group’s core competence is design theory and methodology, product modelling and product data management within the Platform Based Development, Value Driven Design, Systems Engineering, Multidisciplinary Engineering and Product Lifecycle Management.
Research group leader
The group consists of 2 chair professors, 1 adjunct professor, 4 additional senior researchers and 8 PhD students.
Industrial and scientific challenges
- Theoretical and methodological framework: Development of new powerful methods for integrated multi-technological system product development requires a common theoretical framework.
- Generic architecture for integrated multi-technological platforms: For integrated multi-technological platforms, the key to efficient reuse of knowledge is a generic architecture, that can describe the platform throughout its lifecycle with its contained design rationale and its configurable integrated multi-technological hardware and software sub-systems solutions.
- Integrate development of methodology and IT support: Future development methods and IT tools need to be developed in close interaction in order to effectively support complete integrated multi-technological platform development processes.
Geometry Assurance and Robust Design
Core competence
The core competence within this group is within assembly modelling and analysis, robust locating system design, variation simulation, visualization, tolerance optimization, inspection preparation and use of inspection data for product and process control.
The research team has over the last decade produced a number of scientific results that have been transferred into commercial software products. Today, these results are being used in daily operation by a large number of engineers within 20-25 international companies
Research group leader
The group currently consists of 1 chair professor, 1 adjunct professor, 6 additional senior researchers and 9 PhD students.
Industrial and scientific challenges
- Accuracy in simulation and visualization: High quality decisions, based on digital models and representations require:
- better simulation models with higher accuracy and better representation of reality
- better quality in input data for simulation models
- better ways to present and use simulation results. - Transferring simulation results into new product and process knowledge: Consistent use of simulation in different stages of the geometry assurance loop generates new knowledge and better understanding of specific product and production system behaviour, interaction and error propagation and perception and interpretation of digital models and visual quality.
- Design rules and working procedures based on new knowledge: New knowledge of specific system behaviour, perception and visual quality are used to establish rules and decision support for robust geometry design and guidelines and working procedures for use of simulation and visualization.
Geometry and Motion Planning
Core competences
The core competences within this research group are automatic path planning of robots and rigid bodies, sequence optimization, discrete geometry and physics, computer graphics and software implementation.
The research team has over the years produced a number of results, related to geometry and motion planning, that have been transferred into commercial software products, today used in daily operation by engineers in Sweden, Germany, US and Japan.
Research group leader
The group includes 20 researchers at FCC.
Industrial and scientific challenges
- Verifying that a product can be assembled and later on disassembled for service purposes. This is an important activity of geometry simulation in the manufacturing industry, and research methods and software for automatic generation of collision free assembly sequences and paths, considering motion complexity and geometrical tolerances, are therefore of interest.
- Guaranteeing geometrical quality and factory throughput during assembly and joining using robotized manufacturing. To solve this problem, research integrating variation simulation of joining, line balancing, sequencing and coordination of operations with automatic path planning is conducted within Wingquist Laboratory.
- Modelling of collisions in digital models, and new automatic path planning algorithms generating motions of least collisions. This gives new possibilities for giving geometrical feedback in early phases to product development.
Automation
Core competences
The core competences within this research group are formal methods from computer science, control theory, discrete event modelling, verification and optimization, applied to flexible production systems.
The research group is internationally well recognized. General Motors R&D, Warren, USA recently identified the group as one of their long-term strategic research partners globally within automation.
Research group leader
The group includes at present 4 professors, 1 additional senior researcher and 11 PhD students.
From January 2017 Bengt Lennartson is IEEE Fellow for his contributions to hybrid and discrete event systems for automation and sustainable production.
IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership in the world’s largest technical professional organization, given to persons with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest.
Industrial and scientific challenges
- Information integration: Huge amount of information is stored in today’s manufacturing design process. The challenge is to make necessary information for simulation and control design available in a simple and efficient manner.
- Complexity issues: New tools developed within this research area involve inherently complex computations. Both efficient algorithms and data structures, which exploit the modular structure of the problem, are considered to be able to solve real industrial problems.
- Simple user interaction: To obtain industrial acceptance it is crucial to obtain simple methods and working procedures. User-friendly software interfaces and interaction are necessary, where the user can map the software and the physical behaviour onto each other.