Events
Past Event
ME512 Seminar Series- Chris Rahn 3-4:20PM
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering
3:00 PM
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L211, Technological Institute
Details
Battery Systems Engineering Enabling Mobility and Grid Independence
Batteries enable mobile and un-plugged electronics with applications ranging from cell phones to solar homes. Batteries are being widely adopted to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of hybrid and electric vehicles, including electric aircraft. Cost and life of the energy storage system, however, are concerns that limit the desirability of battery powered devices. This seminar introduces the electrochemistry, dynamic modeling, and controls associated with the emerging field of battery systems engineering. The governing partial differential equations are derived, simplified, discretized, and reduced in order to develop efficient and accurate models that include important aging and thermal effects. Model-based state of charge and state of health algorithms are derived that predict the remaining charge and capacity evolution of a battery pack, respectively. Dynamic current limiters and thermal management algorithms are shown to maximize power and minimize degradation. New research directions in active safety and multifunctional battery systems are described.
Bio:
Christopher D. Rahn graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in mechanical engineering in 1985 and an M.S. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1986. After three years as a Research and Development Engineer at Ford Aerospace, he returned to Berkeley to pursue a Ph.D. After graduating from Berkeley in 1992, Dr. Rahn joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University. In 2000, he moved to the Pennsylvania State University where he is now the J. 'Lee' Everett Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Associate Dean for Innovation in the College of Engineering, Director of the Mechatronics Research Laboratory, and Co-Director of the Battery and Energy Storage Technology Center. Dr. Rahn's research work on the modeling, analysis, design, and control of mechatronic systems has resulted in three books (including Battery Systems Engineering), over two hundred peer reviewed publications, and several patents. An ASME Fellow, Dr. Rahn is the Technical Editor of an ASME journal and chaired an ASME technical committee and the executive committee of the ASME Design Engineering Division.
Time
Monday, March 2, 2020 at 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Location
L211, Technological Institute Map
Contact
Calendar
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering
ME Alumni Seminar Series- Apostolos Karafillis
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering (ME)
2:00 PM
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1.350, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center
Details
On the Design and Manufacture of Structures for Flightworthy Gas Turbines
by Apostolos Karafillis
Chief Consulting Engineer
Structures and Additive Design
GE Aerospace
Abstract
The design and manufacture of gas turbine components presents unique technical challenges that highlight the relevance and importance of the disciplines of mechanical and aerospace engineering. In this presentation, we will focus on describing the fundamental technical requirements for parts of flightworthy gas turbines and will then share examples of designs and innovations to meet these requirements. The talk will include the description of typical loading conditions and operating environments, and the description of how these requirements guide the selection of design features, materials, and manufacturing methods. We will discuss three specific examples: The selection of features and architecture of a bearing housing, the design of a turbine frame with a mix of metallic and composite materials, and the development of methods for characterizing the performance of components manufactured with non-traditional methods. Through these examples, it will be shown that successful hardware design requires the combination of robust design methods, rigorous implementation of the principles of mechanics of materials, and the development of design and manufacturing innovation.
Time
Tuesday, April 30, 2024 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Location
1.350, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center Map
Contact
Calendar
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering (ME)
Russ Tedrake, MIT and Toyota Research Institute, "Dexterous Manipulation with Diffusion Policies"
Center for Robotics and Biosystems (CRB)
11:30 AM
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M416, Technological Institute
Details
Speaker: Russ Tedrake, Toyota Professor of EECS, Aero/Astro, ME at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and VP of Research at Toyota Research Institute
Title: Dexterous Manipulation with Diffusion Policies
Date and Time: Friday, May 3 at 11:30 AM CT
Location: Tech ESAM M416 and Zoom
Zoom Link: https://tinyurl.com/CRBSeminar
• NU-authenticated attendees will be automatically admitted. Others, please email amy.nedoss@northwestern.edu to be admitted from the waiting room.
Abstract:
At the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we've been working on behavior cloning for dexterous manipulation. Building on the Diffusion Policy framework that we've recently developed in collaboration with Shuran Song, we now have a very solid pipeline for taking ~50-100 bimanual haptic teleop demonstrations and turning that into a surprisingly effective visuomotor (+tactile) policy. Because there is no explicit state representation required, these skills work equally well manipulating deformable, liquid, or other difficult to model tasks as they do for more traditional rigid-object manipulation. We're actively scaling this up into the multi-task setting and now see a plausible path towards "Large Behavior Models". This behavior cloning pipeline is working incredibly well, and must be understood deeply in the broader context of output-feedback control. Time permitting, I'll also tell you a bit about some new results in optimization-based planning and control, and where they might fit in the age of foundation models.
Bio:
Russ Tedrake is the Toyota Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Aero/Astro, and he is a member of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). He is also the Vice President of Robotics Research at Toyota Research Institute (TRI). He received a B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1999, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2004. Dr. Tedrake is the Director of the MIT CSAIL Center for Robotics and was the leader of MIT’s entry in the DARPA Robotics Challenge. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the MIT Jerome Saltzer Award for undergraduate teaching, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in Mathematics, the 2012 Ruth and Joel Spira Teaching Award, and was named a Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellow. His research has been recognized with numerous conference best paper awards, including ICRA, Robotics: Science and Systems, Humanoids, Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, as well as the inaugural best paper award from the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Whole-Body Control.
Time
Friday, May 3, 2024 at 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Location
M416, Technological Institute Map
Contact
Calendar
Center for Robotics and Biosystems (CRB)