Funded Projects

3D printing has become the main driving force of the third industrial revolution by fundamentally transforming the product design and manufacturing. Owing to the wide accessibility and high usability, 3D printers are increasingly exploited by malicious users to fabricate illegal (e.g., keys and gun parts), unlawful (e.g., counterfeiting a patented product), and artificially defective (e.g., embedding hidden cracks in UAV wings) products. To date, 3D printing has raised a host of unprecedented legal challenges since it could be utilized for fabricating potential unaccountable criminal tools for strengthening the public safety and security. Concerned about the misuse of 3D printing technology, the U.S. Department of State urged International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) to limit the proliferation of 3D printed criminal tools. However, these regulations have a varying degree of efficacy and are inadequate, by themselves, to deal with the rapid growth of 3D printers. To this end, our team plans to take the first exploratory research activity and investigate how to use technologies to establish ethical 3D printing in three folds: (1) Legality: 3D printing cannot produce illegal/unlawful products and parts; (2) Assurance: 3D printing cannot fabricate the products/parts with hidden cracks (which might sabotage the objects of interest), intentionally or unintentionally; (3) Accountability: if someone abuses 3D printing, we are able to identify the source 3D printers, which immensely aids the forensic investigation. The team will investigate in the ontology of illegal and unsafe factors, and design novel algorithms for their pre-screening, detection and prevention of unethical behaviors of 3D printing. This project is highly interdisciplinary with the convergence of manufacturing, informatics and artificial intelligence.