I'm lucky to be at Autodesk University this year teaching classes and rubbing the proverbial elbows with all sorts of Autodesk fellows and colleagues. The kickoff keynote was an amazing take on where technology is taking us if we let it and if we do it right. Lynn Allen opened the show as she does every year. Since I was sitting closer this year her presense was quite known...like 50 ft known.
Then cam Doc Brown from the future with the obliatory legal statement. In years past it has been Elvis singing it and other fun nonsense. This year Doc Brown said they don't have lawyers in the future, but he'll state it anyway. Oh and he used a T-Shirt Missle Launcher that was quite impressive.
Next up was Jeff Kowalski, the CTO of Autodesk discussing the future of Autodesk development and design methodologies. Jeff talked about how as soon a product design is finished and its off to manufacturing that product is essentially already dead or dying because it can no longer adapt to its environment it enters. A large emphasis was placed on bio mimicry, but not in the traditional sense of a designer mimicing the look of something found in nature, but the nature of nature itself to respond and evolve from sensory input and adapt to challenges. Consider a carbon fiber spoiler that can adapt to moisture sensitivity to change how it allows air to pass through it. It could change to provide more downforce to keep a car grounded based on the sensory input we allow it to experience through design.
Next up Jeff talked about Generative Design. This budding theology is been pretty cutting edge lately, with the idea that we can supply design criteria as the designer, the computer understands enough about the design and engineering to make plausible iterations of the proposed design to alleviate tedious CAD Modeling work. Tell the computer you want to drive torque, the computer says these are the ways you can do it, pick what configuration or transfer method you want and here are the deeper options.
I basically saw two sides to this conversation, what we can do now and what we can do in the future. A lot of what was shown was only really plausible with 3D printing or through advanced manufacturing techniques so it currently begs the questions, how much do we have to spend in order to save? Image you need a block, gusset, bracket, frame system. The computer could process very organic looking shapes that minimize stress while also reducing weight. The end result looks to be a lattice or mesh, but it completely serves it purpose...with a 3D printer of some kind and not through traditional subtractive manufacturing.
Carl Bass later in the keynote mentioned the Autodesk Spark 3D Printing backbone and the foundation they created that grants developing companies access to a 100 million fund to progress the nature of 3D printing and there are already plenty of sucess stories. Don't beleive me, check out Dremel's 3D printing stuff the next time you go get supplies at Home Depot. Autodesk is taking preorders now on their 3D printer called Ember as well.
Lastly, the biggest thing I got out of the keynote by Mr. Kowalski was people think that the connectivity of devices such as your washer and dryer to be able to accessed on a tablet is not the Internet of Things, it is the Internet of Thing. That washer or dryer does not talk to anyone but you. There is no collaboration in the devices for the betterment of what it does. Now I thought this was a little wishy washy, because there are devices out there that do talk to other devices or understand what they are doing in response to the environment around them. There are thermostates that are programmed to know the environment and adjust accordingly or sprinkler systems to know when it rained so it doesn't waste water. But ask yourself, what life intelligence can you give YOUR product today? What life mimicry can you provide the world to make your product stand out before your competitor does it?
Here are some quotes from Mr. Kowalski...
“At Autodesk, we’re starting to look at technology and design itself through the lens of nature, a complete inversion of the traditional perspective.”
“We’ve started to look at the design process as a living process.”
“Nature only moves forward, and for us to experience similar progress we need to consider the huge corpus of potentially relevant ideas and designs that already exist.”
“We’re developing a system that learns the same way we do… and the outcome is a tool that works in a lifelike manner and supports the way we solve problems naturally.”
“We need to stop telling the computer what to do and instead tell the computer what we want to achieve.”
“Generative design mimics natures approach to design. Generative design starts with your goals and then it explores all the possible permeations of a solution through successive generations until the best one is found.”
“The things that we design now and in the future need to do three things – they need to sense, respond and collaborate.”
“Collecting data, even big data, isn’t enough. We need our objects and environments to also respond. To take some kind of action based on that sensory input.”
“The most enlightened things that we’ll design will be those that are actually capable of collaborating with each other to create new experiences for us.”
“Experiences don’t come from the things they come from you – the designer.”
