IFTF's Future Now

Manufacturing 2.0

One of the distinctive features of Web 2.0, I've felt, is an understanding that humans are very good at certain things, computers are really good at different things, and groups of people are good at yet other things; and that creating systems that combine individual, machine, and collective intelligence will be powerful-- more powerful than, for example, software that tries to mimic human capabilities.

Today, while reading Bill Leslie's brilliant article, "Blue Collar Science,"* on Western Electric's efforts to commercialize the transistor and integrated circuit-- a category of work that, he argues, is just as important in the history of R&D as the more famous and detached style of research that we normally think of as "R&D"-- I came across this 1964 quote by Eugene Anderson, a Bell Labs researcher:

[H]ighly complex assembly machines... are always expensive and are extremely specialized. A change in design or technology can turn a beautiful machine into a boat anchor overnight. We tend to forget that while labor costs are high, so is the cost of capital. We are finding that simple tools coupled with the sensing, judging and tactile abilities of people are often more desirable than complex machinery. It is very difficult to make a machine that has the eyeball sensory abilities or is as smart as even a scatterbrained 18-year old... at least for the same cost and flexibility.

A similar kind of relationship between human and machine, which recognizes that symbiotic systems can sometimes do better work, more cheaply, than ones that try to cut humans out of the loop.

* Stuart W. Leslie, "Blue collar science: Bringing the transistor to life in the Lehigh Valley," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Science 32:1 (2001), 71-113.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, manufacturing, social software, collective intelligence

Chemical origami: printing 3D designs

from PhysicsWeb,

Israeli scientists have created a technique of converting flat discs into three-dimensional structures. They apply a monomer solution to the surface of the disc that shrinks when heated, so that the disc buckles to make certain shapes.

Eran Sharon and colleagues from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have now done just that by calculating a "metric" – a tensor that characterizes how local distances ought to vary over a surface when activated. Using this metric as a blueprint, the physicists applied the monomer solution N-isopropylacrylamide (i.e. the stimulus) in varying spatial concentration over the surface of the disc. When the disc was then heated over 33 °C, the regions of higher concentration shrunk more (in other words, local distance was reduced) and hence created deeper bends under the resultant stress.

Sharon's team created a range of structures varying in complexity, from slightly wavy crisp-like objects to those that look like a sombrero. Randall Kamien, a physicist from the University of Pennsylvania, told Physics Web that the technique could be used in the engineering of prototypes. "You could imagine a printer that prints a metric into a flat sheet, which you heat, and it forms the desired 3D object," he said.

Synthetic Gecko

The gecko must be one of the most-studied animals in the world today, thanks to its ability to climb virtually any surface. A number of engineers are working on making synthetic gecko tape, which would adhere strongly to a surface, without leaving adhesive residue. British company BAE Systems recently announced that it had created Synthetic Gecko, a reusable polymer "covered in millions of tiny mushroom-like hairs."

Future applications could include an adhesive to repair aircraft, skin grafts or even a Spiderman-style suit.

"It would mean that your local window cleaner could dispense with his ladders and climb up the side of your house," says Dr Sajad Haq, a principal research scientist at the company's Advanced Technology Centre in Filton, Bristol....

It is manufactured by a modified version of a technique known as photo-lithography, commonly used to make silicon chips.

The technique uses light to etch three-dimensional patterns into a material.

"The processes we use are modifications of standard electronic fabrication processes," says Dr Haq. "They're cheap, well known, well understood and can be scaled up to very large areas cheaply."

Technorati Tags: biomimicry

The Promise of E-Paper

A colleague passes along a link to an article on E-Ink and E-Paper: E-Paper Enters Practical Use. In NE Asia Online. Very good overview of the topic, vendors and new developments. Have worked with a number of prototype e-ink displays that showed promise. Since then there have been considerable developments in this area, including color displays and foldable screens. Cost and visibility are still issues, but are being addressed. Article has a great diagram of applications and their technical specifications. Ultimately the goal would be to have refreshable E-paper, but it would clearly not be cheap refreshable paper any time soon.

Self-repairing spacecraft

From New Scientist, another interesting example of biomimicry:

A spacecraft skin is being developed that assesses the severity of any damage it suffers from space debris and other impacts. The project, which is inspired by the behaviour of ants, is seen as the first step towards a self-repairing craft.

The team at CSIRO, Australia's national research organisation, is working with NASA on the project and has so far created a model skin made up of 192 separate cells. Behind each cell is an impact sensor and a processor equipped with algorithms that allow it to communicate only with its immediate neighbours. Just as ants secrete pheromones to help guide other ants to food, the CSIRO algorithms leave digital messages in cells around the system, indicating for instance the position of the boundary around a damaged region. The cell's processor can use this information to route data around the affected area.

Technorati Tags: biomimicry, space

Gershenfeld's FAB: Personal Fabrication

I have posted on work by Neil Gershenfeld and MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms a number of times, in particular about his work on personal fabrication. Now he has extended his previous writings in this area in his new book FAB. Its all about building fabrication labs (fabs) driven by desktop computing. The result would be a very cheap means to construct designs, prototypes and actual products. Testing of many of the ideas come from an MIT class called How to Build (Almost) Anything. He does an excellent job linking this to the history of related technologies. In particular it matches well with computer printing technology, which translates bits into printed documents.

He makes the analogy that modern computer printing started with simplistic dot matrix applications, but can now cheaply reproduce high resolution photographs. I recall speculating at the time that we should be constructing 'origami' printing systems, where you folded paper into other objects. The basic idea is the same, but Gershenfeld is using much more sophisticated construction devices, such as laser cutters and milling machines. Instead of buying a product, you are sent a design specification, and your personal fabricator builds it. Or perhaps you design it yourself.

Less clear to me is actual practicality of such a method to address real designs ... I am not a designer, and have not worked with any fabrication system, so its hard to guage its abilities. His examples in Ghana and India are interesting, but I can't see how such relatively complex things can be constructed by such simple means. Some of the examples he uses remind me of things I saw at the MIT Media Lab, unfortunate in that they may turn-off some people with their oddity. Though not a deeply technical book, you will need a strong technology interest to like this book. This is an area that will likely evolve further, the book is an instructive overview, and is well worth reading. Businessweek review.

Nano fears

Fiona Harvey has a nice piece, Can we overcome nano-fear? in today's FT

The piece begins by stating the current "fear" models (grey goo, "nano in my lungs!"), and then traces some of their roots.

Public fear of nanotechnology has been fuelled recently by public figures ranging from thriller writers to members of the English monarchy. Michael Crichton's novel Prey posited a future in which nanomachines take over the planet. Prince Charles weighed in last year with his views on the dangers of grey goo.

Environmental groups have also taken up the cause, chiefly ETC (Action Group for Erosion, Technology and Concentration), a Canada-based group that has called for a moratorium on nanotechnology research while safety standards are worked out for dealing with nanotubes.

A nice connection is made between nano and the current situation of GM crop. And like GM, the article offers that:

A moratorium on research, along the lines of that on GM crops, would be a "disaster", says Prof Donaldson. The promise of nanotechnology, in applications from healthcare to industry, is too great to be neglected.

Given the British roots of the publication, it points out that the U.S. does not seem to be reacting to the current fear-mongering, while Europeans are still undecided given their acceptance of the jeremiads over GM (and BSE).

It ends with a nice piece on current applications of nano and how "nano" itself is changing from top-down, bulk materials to something more complex and promising.

Update on flexible displays from CSM

Lori Valigra offers a strong update on the flexible display technologies in Next digital screen could fold like paper, The Christian Science Monitor.

The article gets quotes from the leaders, big and small, mentions most of the dominant ideas that everyone has for this technology, and describes some of the differences in the implementations of the technology.

The article is VERY accessible.

3D printing

Following up on last week's entry on personal fabrication, SpaceDaily.com reports that a USC engineer has come up with a new method for low-cost 3D sintering:

A University of Southern California inventor has created a machine that can produce 3-dimensional "printouts" in plastic and even metal more quickly and cheaply than widely-used existing systems.

The new machine is a significant improvement on the laser sintering machines now widely used around the world to build complex 3D forms from computer files, according to its creator, Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis.

Khoshnevis' SIS (Selective Inhibition of Sintering) machine eliminates the laser that is used by traditional 3D printers, speeding up the process and reducing the price of the machines. It's described in detail in an article published in Rapid Prototyping Journal.

Personal fabrication

Edge 123 has a conversation with Neil Gershenfeld, head of the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, on the future of "personal fabrication."

The next big thing in computers will be literally outside the box, as we bring the programmability of the digital world to the rest of the world. With the benefit of hindsight, there's a tremendous historical parallel between the transition from mainframes to PCs and now from machine tools to personal fabrication. By personal fabrication I mean not just making mechanical structures, but fully functioning systems including sensing, logic, actuation, and displays.

Mainframes were expensive machines used by skilled operators for limited industrial operations. When the packaging made them accessible to ordinary people we had the digital revolution. Computers now let you connect to Amazon.com and pick something you want, but the means to make stuff remain expensive machines used by skilled operators for limited industrial operations. That's going to change. Laboratory research, such as the work of my colleague Joe Jacobson, has shown how to print semiconductors for logic, inks for displays, three-dimensional mechanical structures, motors, sensors, and actuators. We're approaching being able to make one machine that can make any machine.

This is something that could be tremendously important, and in this interview Gershenfeld does a good job of explaining why.