In October, the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures & Composites Center revealed a 25-foot, 5,000-pound boat that set new records for the world’s largest solid 3D-printed object. It was printed in 3 days by the largest prototype polymer 3D printer belt.

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Researchers from ETH Zurich have used a new technique, based on stereolithography, to produce complex glass objects with 3D-printing.

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Jim Goodnight — considered the Godfather of AI — CEO of the world’s largest privately held analytics software companies by revenue: SAS Institute, notes that, as AI becomes a mainstream tool for business, it has evolved to help in forecasting with the development of neural networks that mimic the way the human brain operates. During the 2020s, advancements in computer vision will make robots more sophisticated and transform the workplace.

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Universal Robots, the leader in collaborative robots, has a new cobot capable of lifting a 35 pound payload with a reach of about 35″. The cobot can tackle heavy-duty tasks around humans, safely, reliably and efficiently.

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There are many little jobs in car factories that are tedious for people. e.g. attaching lettering to new cars. People use jigs and special frames and equipment to ensure that these badges are glued straight, in a proper location, and with proper pressure to ensure good adhesion. In SEAT’s Martorell factory, two robots will take this task – and they will work with no safety barriers.

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A collaborative robot (the BotX Welder) was developed by Hirebotics to be easily programmed to produce precision parts in small batches for small and medium sized metal fabricators, overcoming a shortage of welders.

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IBM announced a new blockchain network aimed at improving manual and cumbersome supply chain management. The founders of the network (‘Trust Your Supplier’) include Anheuser-Busch InBev, Cisco, GlaxoSmithKline, Lenovo, Nokia, Schneider Electric and Vodafone.

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The automotive industry is facing one of the most powerful and most varied set of disruptions in the history of capitalism: The decline of the internal combustion engine; The rise of ride-sharing services; The rise of autonomous vehicles; The growing importance of technology in cars.

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In Amazon’s sorting facilities, a human will grab a flat package, hold its barcode under a red laser dot, and place it on a small orange robot. Hitting a button sends the robot mule to one of 300+ rectangular holes in the floor corresponding to zip codes. When there, the robot uses its own conveyor belt to slide the package down a chute to be loaded manually onto a truck for delivery.

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A study by Oxford Economics, a private British-based research and consulting firm, forecasts that robots will take over some 20 million manufacturing jobs worldwide by 2030, extending a trend of worsening social inequality while boosting overall economic output. Robots have already taken over millions of manufacturing jobs and are now gaining in services, helped by advances in computer vision, speech recognition and machine learning, the study noted. In lower-skilled regions, job losses will be twice as high as those in higher-skilled regions, even in the same country.

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Amazon has installed $1+ million robots in its facilities that can pack 6-700 boxes/hour, and wrap packages inside custom-assembled boxes, operating at 4-5 times a worker’s rate. The robots may be installed at dozens of warehouses, eliminating about 24 positions/warehouse.

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The world’s largest furniture manufacturer, Ashley Furniture, is using robotics and 3D-printing to expand production in a shrinking labor market, achieving 10% more business with almost 15% less labor.

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The Paris-based 100-year-old International Chamber of Commerce has partnered with Singapore-based blockchain startup Perlin to improve supply chain processes for its 45 million members (from 130 countries), making the processes more traceable and transparent.

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Researchers at Purdue U. and USC have developed automated machine learning technology to help improve additive manufacturing by ensuring that parts fit more precisely, and assembly needs less testing and time.

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PepsiCo is investing its $4.9 billion 2018 annual profits in spending $2.5 billion (mostly on severance payments) to restructure the company by laying off many of its 263,000 employees and automating its warehouse and factory equipment.

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University of Michigan researchers created a new approach to 3D-printing that lifts complex shapes from a vat of liquid at <100 times faster than current processes, using 2 lights to control where the resin hardens—and where it stays fluid. This enables the resin to be solidified in more sophisticated patterns.

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Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and UC, Berkeley have developed a new high-speed 3D-printing method (Computed Axial Lithography) which uses projected photons to illuminate the syrup-like resin, creating a continuously shifting video of projections as the vial rotates. Most builds take several minutes to complete, many times faster than existing polymer 3D-printing techniques.

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A rapid shift toward automation in e-commerce distribution centers and manufacturing plants has led to autonomous vision-guided pallet jacks, forklifts, industrial tuggers, and other factory and warehouse vehicles.

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Swedish start-up Digital Metal is launching a fully-automated production system, using 3D-printing with robots performing pre and post production functions.

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Hybrid additive manufacturing machines integrate layer-by-layer building with traditional CNC (Computerized Numerical Control) processing and laser cladding for metal products.

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Swiss robotics company ABB is spending US$150 million to build an advanced robotics factory in Shanghai, using robots to build robots. Its YuMi single-arm robots will perform small parts assembly.

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Swedish start-up Digital Metal is launching a fully-automated production system, using 3D-printing with robots performing pre and post production functions.

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Hewlett Packard launched its HP Metal Jet 3D printing technology, designed to deliver mechanically functional parts faster than current systems with the aim of revamping factory production for auto, industrial and healthcare companies. Initial metal focus will be stainless steel.

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A Volkswagen car has 6,000-8,000 manufactured parts. Volkswagen became the first automotive manufacturer to use the HP Metal Jet 3D-printing technology suitable for mass production.

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MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab has perfected the use of super-stretchy, 100% silicone rubber, 4D-printing it into air chambers that can be programmed to inflate and deflate at certain times,

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The Silicon Valley start-up, Arevo, is 3D-printing samples of its first generation of bikes. A custom robot prints the company’s carbon fiber-embedded material using a multi-dimensional, environmentally-friendly process that makes them strong. The bikes will be in mass production in 2019.

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3D-printing is now part of the entire product life cycle. Frito-Lay uses the lowest-cost printers to print prototype potato chip geometries; Bugatti and Chanel 3-D-print their final products. MIT’s lab has made substantial progress in improving printing speed.

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Robots from San Francisco’s Osaro have adaptive gripping skills. They can identify objects in front of them, study how they behave when poked, pushed, and grasped, and then decide how to handle them – and the robots continue to learn from experience.

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Consulting firm Protiviti’s research shows a growing demand for Robotic Process Automation, which involves the use of software robots to handle any rules-based repetitive tasks quickly and cost effectively.

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University of Minnesota researchers used a customized, low-cost 3D printer to print electronics on a real hand for the first time – Useful e.g. to print temporary sensors to detect chemical or biological agents or solar cells to charge essential electronics. They also printed biological cells on the skin wound of a mouse, leading to new medical treatments for wound healing and skin grafting.

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In 2017, scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology and the Singapore University of Technology and Design, used a composite made from an acrylic and an epoxy along with a commercial printer and a heat source to create 4-D objects, such as a flower that can close its petals. They have now developed a powerful printer that could streamline the creation of self-assembling structures that can change shape after being exposed to heat and other stimuli, accelerating the use of 4-D printing in aerospace, medicine and other industries. The printer can use different materials to create hard and soft components at the same time, incorporating conductive wiring directly into shape-changing structures.

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Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created a process that allows plastic printed with a cheap 3D-printer to fold itself into predetermined shapes with the application of heat. The material may one day be used to produce flat-pack products that can be assembled quickly with a heat gun.

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Alibaba is trialing a blockchain platform for supply chain tracking to counter the spread of counterfeit food and health products. The new pilot program will track international shipments to China from an Australian healthcare supplier and a New Zealand dairy product maker.

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Robots have found a particularly important niche working in radioactive and toxic environments. After the Fukushima disaster, Japanese roboticists have created several robots capable of surviving, if only for a few minutes, inside the compromised reactor cores. Decommissioning the Piketon, Ohio facility will be helped by 2 customized autonomous robots, developed at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, which will identify uranium deposits on pipe walls, costly when done by human workers

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Using its Speedfactory in Germany, Adidas is making shoes designed for certain cities, starting with London. The factory uses athlete data to create the city-customized designs, with manufacture by robots, cutting time to market from >12 months to <2 months. Mass production profitability requires at least 50,000 shoes, with Adidas employing a million factory workers in China and Vietnam.

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A new class of collaborative industrial robots (‘cobots’), is distinguished by their relatively easy programming, and their ability to work safely alongside people thanks to robust safety features. Universal Robots is a major supplier with about 60% of the global market and $99 million (2016). Cobots can be used for ‘lights-out’ (i.e. all nght) operation.

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Moshe Vardi, a computer science professor at Rice University and a leading expert in AI, points out that manufacturing is actually at an all-time high, but uses 8 million fewer employees. (Robots cost $15/hour to operate.) It’s impossible to predict the result of automation on the local basis, and people need to move to something that they do better than machines, which would involve higher-value skills.

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Lawrence Livermore researchers use high-powered arrays of laser diodes, a Q-switched laser and a specialized laser modulator to flash print an entire layer of metal powder at a time, instead of raster scanning with a laser across each layer. Large metal objects could be printed in a fraction of the time needed for metal 3D printers on the market today, expanding possibilities for industries requiring larger metal parts, such as aerospace and automotive.

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The furniture company, Steelcase, partnered with MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab at its International Design Center to create a printer that uses liquefied rubber, plastic or foam, which is injected into a scalable vat of gel (algae) that holds 3D-printed objects in place until they harden & can be removed & cleaned. Test designs were produced in minutes.

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Desktop Metal plans on developing affordable 3-D printers that can make metal parts—and thus transforming much of manufacturing. It has raised nearly $100 million, and its founders include 4 prominent MIT professors, including the head of the school’s department of materials science and Emanuel Sachs, who filed one of the original patents on 3-D printing in 1989. Their vision is to establish a process of creating a digital design, printing out prototypes that could be tested and refined, and then use the digital file of the optimized version to create a commercial product or part out of the same material using a 3-D printer. The article reviews the history of 3-D printing and the current main players in the industry.

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A pop-up Adidas store in Berlin is offering customers the chance to design, create, and purchase a sweater in about 4 hours. A laser body scan determines the correct sweater size, and light projections show off potential patterns for the sweater, while customers use hand gestures tracked by sensors to tweak the pattern to their liking. Customers choose design options and color combinations on a computer screen. The cost is 200 euros (around $215).

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The basis for the paper, the material that is the most used for printing on, is cellulose. Cellulose may soon also become a material that is used to do 3-D printing. New research done at MIT shows that this abundant material may potentially provide a renewable, biodegradable alternative to the polymers currently used for 3-D printing.

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