Our research employs artificial intelligence techniques that seek to automate the main time/cost drivers of the engineering design and manufacturing process. The features of a product inform the form, function, and behavior of the resulting design concept that can be subsequently created using traditional manufacturing/additive manufacturing methods. While there exists a wide range of computer-aided design tools that seek to generate 3D design concepts, they are primarily parametric in nature and rely extensively on domain expertise, which may not always be readily available. Grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have enabled our research team to explore the use of Deep Generative Design methods such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to generate 3D representations of design concepts. However, there is more to a design than simply its 3D form, as the design must perform a function and operate in an environment where its behavior may/may not perform as intended. Towards this end, our research group has proposed liking the AI-generation of a design, with the automatic evaluation of its function and behavior using physics-based simulation engines. The end result is a physics-informed design that has the potential to be realized through techniques such as additive manufacturing.

Bio: Dr. Conrad Tucker is an Arthur Hamerschlag Career Development Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and holds courtesy appointments in Machine Learning, Robotics, Biomedical Engineering, and CyLab Security and Privacy. His research focuses on the design and optimization of systems through the acquisition, integration, and mining of large-scale, disparate data.

Dr. Tucker has served as PI/Co-PI on federally/non-federally funded grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Army Research Laboratory (ARL), the Office of Naval Research (ONR) via the NSF Center for eDesign, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). In February 2016, he was invited by National Academy of Engineering (NAE) President Dr. Dan Mote, to serve as a member of the Advisory Committee for the NAE Frontiers of Engineering Education (FOEE) Symposium. He received his Ph.D., M.S. (Industrial Engineering), and MBA degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.