DISCRETE LABORATORY
The DISCRETE lab is an integrated facility for teaching, research, and outreach activities. The lab serves as a facility for hands-on integration of machines and controls in which students will be able to integrate all the key components of an intelligent machine: open architecture controller, instrumentation, sensors, mechanical structures, and computer hardware/software (sponsored by NSF). Research in the DISCRETE Lab addresses fundamental issues in distributed systems at the interface of distributed manufacturing, distributed controls and distributed computing. A manufacturing shop-floor supercomputer is being designed and constructed in the lab using reconfigurable computing architectures and high-speed networks (sponsored by NSF). This will be used for real-time distributed simulation and control of manufacturing systems constructed by IME students and FAME.