3-D printing:
3-D printing has been a growing area of interest over the past years with many advancements being made. The types of materials able to be used in the printing process has expanded and thus the level of technology being produced by these printers has also increased. Anthony Yau mentions in his post these machines can now print out small electronics, such as hearing aids, with custom sizes and dimensions. Even with the recent advancements, I do not see the uses of this technology expanding to affect the construction/building process overall. I do not think that it would be practical to have structural members or connections “printed” (especially since the materials used for printing are for the most part brittle plastics at this time).
3-D printing has been a growing area of interest over the past years with many advancements being made. The types of materials able to be used in the printing process has expanded and thus the level of technology being produced by these printers has also increased. Anthony Yau mentions in his post these machines can now print out small electronics, such as hearing aids, with custom sizes and dimensions. Even with the recent advancements, I do not see the uses of this technology expanding to affect the construction/building process overall. I do not think that it would be practical to have structural members or connections “printed” (especially since the materials used for printing are for the most part brittle plastics at this time).
Robotics and AI:
One area of robotics has had a significant amount of
research done in recent years, the autonomous vehicle. This type of vehicle is being made in order
to make long trips of extended driving safer by reducing the need of outside/human
interaction in order to stay safely on the road. Another area/use of robotics that comes to my
mind is during the manufacturing/production process. This area is more relevant to structures and
the construction process. The idea of
drones being used in the intelligent building process was discussed in
class. The extent of drones being useful
in the construction process would be mainly to carry equipment to workers in
order to increase safety as well as increase time spent working. Robotics is very important for the precise
creation of structural members as well as a wide variety of other
products. The limitation of robotics is
mainly due to our understanding of artificial intelligence at this point. The machines and robots we have now are
capable of completing the tasks that any human may instruct it to do, but it
may require constant attention and correction by the human in control. With advances in AI these machines are
becoming closer to being able to “think” and rationalize an appropriate
response without manual correction being necessary. However with an increase in this area of
technology, there are also societal repercussions that arise. Catherine Stephens brings this up in her B1
post speaking about how many jobs have been replaced by robots/machines. This
Future:
The most areas being discussed in each group’s blogs are all
developing quickly and becoming more and more relevant to daily life. Many of the topics rely on each other to advance
further such as robotics, AI, sensors, software, and database. The technologies discussed here can
potentially be applied an intelligent building process, and only become more
viable as developments are made. As I stated
early I do not see 3-D printing, for example, as being very relevant to an
intelligent building but a breakthrough may occur in the next 20 years that can
change this completely. As these
technologies increase so will the applications they are used for, and are beneficial
to, will increase as well. Many other blog posts comment on the issue of
privacy with growing technology, which is a very real problem currently and
continues to grow. With sensors and
monitors becoming more common in households everywhere, this leads to more
information being “available” in a database which can cause privacy or security
issues for people.
Sources:
At first, I agree with you about your comment that 3D printing wouldn't be very effective in our modern world since the assembly line and cheap manufacturing is so easily accessible. But I recently came across an article about 3D printing circuits while printing an physical object at the same time. The integration of electronics into 3D printed objects seems much faster and prototypes can be easily made quickly and efficiently. 3D printing seems very arbitrary when mass production but when it comes to design and prototypes, 3d printing can allow for major or minor adjustments to specific and complicated designs. In this case, the electronics are essentially woven into the production of the object and can preform perfectly after production. This may be a key into smaller and smaller scaled product designs that might allow for more things like a more complex microchip or maybe 3D printed skin that can act as replacement for the skin (just an idea).
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