With Singapore planning to 3D print public housing and the fascinating 3D Print Canal House in Amsterdam, the concept of 3D printed houses is hardly new. But as a result of a Freeform Home Design Challenge hosted by a Tennessee-based startup Branch Technology, the world will see its first freeform 3D printed house called ‘Curve Appeal’ by first half of 2017.
I have been helping by advising various companies across multiple industries plan & prep for more on boarding of bot technology as part of their own IT infrastructure and application layer. What I have seen companies who are at a turning point for their applications and infrastructure are wanting to invest in more automation meaning more online bot technology so that the resources that they currently have can be scaled to focus on new products & services innovation to help IT become a profit center & deploy commercial services and products to the company’s external customers.
We’re at the cusp of a sharp rise in devices that have no screen but do have conversational voice controls, such as the Amazon Echo. Smart home and Internet-of-things (IoT) objects that respond to users’ voices will improve and become more intuitive with further iterations and wider adoption.
Already they can, for example, dim the lights in a room and play a favorite song. With practice, and, by the virtues of machine learning, these user experiences will become ever more intuitive, capable, and innate.
Beyond the IoT, brands are seeing bots as a new type of media – one that can be harnessed to expand a company’s reach to new customers and networks. As brands use bots more and more to handle customer interactions, make recommendations, and help fulfill requests, those brands and the bots themselves also absorb insights about customer behaviors and needs.
Posted in habitats, robotics/AI
Forget pitching a tent when camping; soon (at this rate) we can have the 3D Printer print us a cabin.
A tiny house was built using Vesta, the 3D concrete printer. It took 24 hours to build the structure. The developer aims to shorten the construction time with the third version of the device.
Vesta, the 3D concrete printer, was just used to print a house. Though the word “house” may be a little suspect. Admittedly, given its size, the structure is more of a tool shed than a home, but one could theoretically live inside of it.
The structure took 24 hours to print and boasts a 2 × 1 square meter (7 × 4 square feet) interior. The printer is able to work at a speed of about .3 feet per second and only requires a single person to operate from a computer and feed the printer concrete.
Amazing; imagine when 4D printing produces building materials that self assemble themselves and with 5D printing the building can monitor the building and repairs itself someday in the future.
Hushang Tengda has 3D printed a 400 square meter luxury villa, on site, in just 45 days.
Construction is a huge deal in the 3D printing world right now and the likes of WinSun have made an impact with the first 3D printed office in Dubai. It also printed a five-storey apartment building and 10 3D printed houses in just 24 hours back in China. This villa is a still a breakthrough though, because it was built on site.
We’re making flat pack houses now
Most 3D printed houses are made in parts at a nearby facility and then transported to the final construction site for assembly, almost like flat pack furniture. It is a massive step forward, but the elephant in the room is still the transport costs. So this new construction is a landmark venture in its own right.
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Modern life is punctuated by market cycles.
One year the gears of commerce are whirring along. Businesses are hiring and investing. People are buying houses and cars, televisions and computers. Things are going great. Then a year later, the gears screech to halt—sweeping layoffs, plummeting investment, and crashing markets. No one’s buying anything.
Finally, someone is getting the concept about why in tech where you’re producing technologies that ultimately support many areas of the consumer market in the form of bio/ medical, consumer commercial products, art, homes/ buildings, autos, etc. You must be more inclusive in your teams or find your product and services will plataeu as more and more competitors crowd the space over time; something that other industries have learned many many decades ago.
Because most of the quickly growing companies and startups that tend to dominate it emerged from the maker community, the 3D printing industry often seems to find itself a little sequestered from the rest of the tech industry. Part of the reason is that very few of the industry’s largest companies started or are even based in Silicon Valley. While there is more to the tech industry than Northern California, it is often treated like the popular kids’ lunch table: everyone wants to sit there, and those that are tend to ignore those that aren’t. Sure most of the world’s large tech shows and conferences include plenty of 3D printing these days, but there still isn’t as much crossover as you’d expect, and 3D printing is still treated like that weird cousin who you’re not exactly sure is going to amount to anything.
I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but it almost feels as if being off in its own corner has been good for 3D printing. It has allowed a culture that thrives on open source technology and software to take root, and proven that businesses don’t need excessive patents to be successful if they build their companies correctly. In reality, 3D printing, despite being tech- and software-driven, probably has more in common with the manufacturing industry than high tech. However for all of its varied differences, the 3D printing industry does share one thing with most of the big tech companies in the world, it has a bit of a diversity problem.
IKEA recently launched a hydroponic gardening system to allow people to grow fresh produce at home (without soil or sunlight) and has just unveiled a similar system under development that is aimed at helping restaurants raise ingredients in-house.
The KRYDDA/VÄXER hydroponic garden lets sprout seeds without soil using absorbent foam plugs that keep plants moist (without over-watering, thanks to a built-in sensor). Germinated seeds can then be transferred to pots fitted into a growing tray featuring a solar lamp. The system is designed to be easy to use for even inexpert gardeners.
Wow — if Mrs. Winchester (of famed Winchester Mystery House in SF) had lived today; she could have had her dream infinity house.
Dutch architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars has done something with a large 3D printer that few have probably ever attempted. He took a concrete structure and turned it into a Mobius strip, or “Landscape House,” so the building literally has no ends.
There are currently no practical reasons for this structure to be made, which is probably why nobody has jumped at the chance to build it. Other than being artistic, having such an odd form would serve almost no purpose and prove to be problematic as a home. Moving furniture or any appliances into the structure would prove to be an obstacle, even for the fully-abled. It would likely end up being a playground for children at a science museum or an exhibit at a university.
Wishing them luck.
Tennessee -based Branch Technology has announced it will begin construction of a 3D-printed house in 2017. Designed by Honolulu-based WATG, the project was initiated for the Freeform Home Design Challenge, which asked participants to design for Branch’s Cellular Fabrication (C-Fab) 3D printing technology. The small house designs were required to be between 600 and 800 square feet.
Branch’s C-Fab technology involves 3D printing carbon-fiber-reinforced ABS plastic with a large robotic arm. The resulting formwork can then be covered in more traditional building materials, such as concrete or foam. Instead of the typical completely 3D printed additive technique, C-Fab uses an algorithm to formulate an interior framework for the structure.
WATG’s design, entitled Curve Appeal, will be built at Branch Technology’s lab in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The house is comprised of a curving shell around an open plan. The form of the building also provides a car port. The interior of the house is divided up with class walls and a solid core.
