Dennis A. Muilenburg (president, chair, and chief executive officer of The Boeing Company) visited BARC and UW. Photo with students, faculty, staff at UW and Boeing affiliates
Dennis was on UW campus receiving the Dean’s Award at the College of Engineering Diamond Awards. The visit to BARC highlighted the robust partnership between Boeing and UW.
Krithika Manohar presented her work on data-based approaches in manufacturing.
Photography by Matt Hagen. Copyright: University of Washington. All Rights Reserved.
Boeing leadership, including Jack Meehan, from The Boeing Company Fabrication Division in Auburn visited BARC to review capabilities and explore collaborations. Photo shows Rose discussing remote visualization and human-machine interfaces
Students in the lab described ongoing projects and their research efforts. Kevin Bray provided an overview of the Boeing-UW collaboration in BARC. The visit led to new opportunities for internships at the Auburn facility. Follow-up discussions and visits are planned to develop collaborations.
Last week students from all over the Seattle area descended onto the University of Washington for the annual Engineering Discovery Days, where over 7,000 K-12 students, and their teachers and family participate in hands-on activities and demos related to engineering.
The event, which takes place over the course of two days, has each engineering department and various clubs host experiments and demonstrations for the students to take part in. Such visual demonstrations, typically by engineering undergraduate and graduate students, are attractive means to garner the interest of visiting students and to convey the application of engineering principles, and motivate students to pursue an engineering career.
Two projects from the Boeing Advanced Research Center (BARC) were used to demonstrate engineering concepts at UW’s Engineering Discovery Days, The first was a Haptic Feedback Controller. Students were given the option to select from multiple surfaces, which showed how to provide the user physical (haptic) feedback as to where the cursor is or what it is touching. This Virtual and Augmented Reality technology could help remote manipulation of objects in a manufacturing setting. In the deformable membrane demonstration (shown above), as the user pushed up into the membrane, the user could feel the resistance building up in the controller, until ultimately breaking through the membrane.
The second demonstration was a Robotic Arm, which challenged the students to control a robotic arm and hand to move a cup from one location to the next. Some of the students were even able to figure out the controls and movements of the robot quickly, posting times of less than 30 seconds. Pretty fast!
Students were excited to participate in the experiments across campus, and surely some were further inspired to go into an engineering discipline. Overall the demonstrations made by the BARC and the other engineering groups made for a very fun and successful event.
Collaborative robotics, haptic alert systems for hearing-impaired employees and riveting safety. These are just a few of the projects University of Washington students from the Boeing Advanced Research Center (BARC) showcased at the Future of Flight Museum during a recent meeting with Boeing engineering leadership. University of Washington STEM students from the Boeing Advanced Research Center toured the Boeing Everett Factory after presenting their research projects to Boeing engineering leadership. (Photo from Boeing Communications.)
“We want students to gain hands-on experience in the BARC and come work for Boeing to build the greatest airplanes in the world,” said Todd Zarfos, Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) Engineering leader and Boeing focal for the University of Washington, during the kick-off of the event.
The group of undergraduate and graduate students span multiple UW Engineering Departments and presented on the technologies they’re developing in the lab with the guidance of Boeing senior managers like Blaine Felton and lab manager Kevin Bray, among others. Bray, a Materials & Manufacturing Technology (MMT) engineer and team lead for the BARC, works on campus with the students providing guidance on their ongoing projects throughout the year. Project engineers from BCA Product Development, BR&T MMT and Manufacturing Technology Integration (MTI) and Environment Health and Safety (EHS) meet students and faculty weekly to advise and assist on project strategy and implementation.
This year’s group of students focused on collaborative robotics, mechanic-assisting technology, riveting safety improvement and additive manufacturing processes, among other advanced manufacturing solutions.
Parker Owan, a University of Washington graduate student, shared how his Mechanic Assistance Collaborative Tool (MASCOT) could help mechanics perform assembly tasks in enclosed spaces more safely: “Using collaborative robots for remote or hazardous manufacturing applications could help ensure mechanics’ health and safety in the production environment, especially when visual access is limited.”
The solutions developed in the BARC are designed to one day transition from the lab to the factory. Amy May, director of Boeing Workplace Safety, said, “This type of work needs to happen and will help Boeing team members build our products as safely as possible.”
In 2017 Boeing hired its first full time BARC alumni. Six BARC students have been hired as 2018 Boeing summer interns and will be working in BR&T and BCA Product Strategy and Future Airplane Development.
Above writeup adapted from article by Janelle Bernales, Boeing Communications
Professor Toshiaki Murai, the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Gifu University, Japan visited the University of Washington along with Professor Mutsuhiro Shima and Professor Kazuaki Ito. The goal of the visit was to explore potential research collaborations and academic partnership at the Faculty-level between the University of Washington and Gifu University. In addition to a tour of the BARC lab to learn about models for Industry and University research collaboration, they met with Professor Brian C. Fabien, the Associate Dean of the College of Engineering and Professor Per Reinhall, the Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department and discussed issues in developing new research centers and international academic partnerships. The above photo is from the BARC lab visit. From left, Kevin Bray, Kazuaki Ito, Santosh Devasia, Toshiaki Murai, Mutsuhiro Shima, Parker Owan.
The day turned out to be spectacular. The rains held off, and the UW quad cherry blossoms were in full bloom.
Studying engineering can feel divorced from the real world, according to Benjamin Janicki, a graduate student of mechanical engineering at the University of Washington.
So, what’s cool about a new Boeing-UW engineering research lab is that it allows students to pursue academic and theoretical goals “at an industry pace, which is faster, and with real-world applications,” Janicki said Monday, at the opening of the Boeing Advanced Research Center.
Boeing and the University of Washington recently celebrated their new collaborative research lab at the university’s Seattle campus.
The Boeing Advanced Research Center (BARC) opened its doors this week with tours of the 4,300 square foot lab space and several demonstrations of the center’s capabilities. The center will facilitate joint research between Boeing and the university, initially in the areas of advanced assembly and manufacturing technologies.
On hand to usher in the new center were Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Ray Conner, Washington Governor Jay Inslee …
Boeing engineers and scientists have brought their projects to the University of Washington, opening a new research center on campus that will initially focus on advanced assembly and manufacturing technologies.
The Boeing Advanced Research Center, located in the Department of Mechanical Engineering on the UW campus, will let students and faculty members work collaboratively with Boeing engineers on aircraft and spacecraft assembly and manufacturing. Four initial projects are underway at the UW, led by Boeing-employed affiliate instructors and UW engineering professors.
