Dr Sylwester Pawęta from the Institute of Materials Science and Engineering received PLN 1,454,762.13 for developing a new method of implementing ferritic nitrocarburizing technology, which is still widely used, among others, in the automotive industry.
So far, the research has been carried out on old, not technically advanced equipment, which has made it impossible to meet the increasingly stringent quality standards in production.
Therefore, project funds will be allocated for modification of the vacuum furnace located in the semi-industrial hardening shop of the Institute and development of a technology prototype on this stand, as well as for financial support of the research team. The development of the modern technology will also respond to the issues of pro-ecology in industrial production, explains the winner of the LEADER programme.
Dr Pawęta is an alumnus of Professor Piotr Kula. Currently, he works in the team of Professor Jacek Sawicki. Since the beginning of his professional career, he has been working in industry - currently as the director of operations at the service hardening shop HART-TECH Sp. z o.o. and tries to combine the spheres of business and science. His research team established to carry out the topic "Ferritic low-pressure nitrocarburizing in universal vacuum furnaces" is a good example of interdisciplinarity. The members of the group, according to the programme assumptions, are young scientists from various units of Technical University of Łódź: Institute of Materials Science and Engineering, Institute of Polymer and Dye Technology and Institute of Turbomachinery, as well as young engineers from HART-TECH, graduates of Lodz University of Technology. Research work in the project is planned for 3 years.
Eng. Bartłomiej Cybulski, MSc is a doctoral candidate at theInstitute of Automatic Control. Together with his team, he is working on an adaptive motion controller for an autonomous mobile robot. As the winner of the programme explains:
The intelligence of the controller is to adapt to the environment in which the robot is currently moving. Data provided by sensors installed in the controller and drives are to be used to classify the type of substrate and its parameters. This knowledge of the ground conditions will then be used to fine-tune the wheel slip compensation algorithms and to select an appropriate control strategy for the drives.
The controller is adapted to work with different types of robot suspensions (caterpillar, skid-steer, omnidirectional), which is certainly a revolution in the field of mobile robots and will significantly expand the possibilities of their use in many areas of the economy. It is safe to say that mobile robots in various forms are the future, and the Institute of Automatic Control, where he works, is developing very strongly in this direction.
The funds obtained under the LEADER project in the amount of PLN 1,499,955.00 will be used by Bartłomiej Cybulski to build a technology demonstrator with several types of suspensions and to finance the team's research work.