Collaborative Research: SaTC 2.0: RES: Robust Watermarking for Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS) Business Model

About This Grant

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a multibillion-dollar industry that uses 3D printers to manufacture parts on the basis of computer aided design files. Aircraft parts, space mission parts and biomedical devices are manufactured by AM. Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS) business model has grown significantly in this area because general purpose 3D printers can be used to print a variety of shapes and materials without the need for expensive and time-consuming retooling. Customers on demand outsource part production to providers that offer the best cost, delivery time, and quality. However, the appeal of MaaS is inhibited by various security concerns, both on the customer and the manufacturer side. The customer is concerned with design file misuse, such as its theft, illegal distribution, or infringement of parts. The manufacturer is concerned with a possible bait-and-switch of design files between the quote request and contract. The project’s novelties are to develop security techniques and their interplay that enable a robust watermarking scheme for commonly used design files to address the concerns of both part designers and part manufacturers. The project's broader significance and importance are that the widespread use of MaaS manufacturers for production of industrial components will become more secure for both designers and manufacturers. The novel security measures will help the manufacturing industry grow further significantly. This project devises a solution that addresses concerns of both designers and manufacturers. The conceptual idea relies on the inherent causation between the digital design that defines a part and the physical qualities of the manufactured part. In the envisioned solution, during the quote request phase, a lower quality (LQ) design is shared with multiple manufacturers. The parts produced with such LQ design can exhibit properties such as distorted form, looser fit in the assembly, and degraded functional characteristics like mechanical strength. In addition, such parts can also contain digital and physical watermarks pointing to the manufacturer from whom a quote was requested. Embedded and entangled in each such LQ design are (i) the quality restoration instructions that become available to the contracted manufacturer only and (ii) the robust digital watermark, whose removal or manipulation would prevent quality restoration. Such digital watermarks can be used to establish the provenance of the design and to identify the manufacturer who leaked the design files. The novel security methods that are tested on various complex geometries will help the manufacturing industry to increase the trust in the dynamic supply chain. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.