This plastic pavilion solves one of the biggest problems for 3D printing. Created by London firm Ai Build and exhibited at the GPU Technology Conference in Amsterdam, the five-metre-high structure was constructed by a robot-armed printer guided by AI-powered computer vision.
The combination of robotic brawn and artificial eyes let the printer produce this intricate pattern without sacrificing speed. Its 48 pieces were printed in just over two weeks, rather than the months it would have taken a typical 3D printer. "This saves time and, as a result, it saves money - so 3D printing at large scale becomes feasible," says Daghan Cam, CEO of Ai Build.
3D printers forge designs layer by layer while following a digital blueprint. But because even minimal mistakes can doom a whole structure, they have to plod much more slowly than traditional industrial machines. That's why Cam, a 29-year-old with a background in digital design, introduced vision.
"We attached motion-sensing Kinect cameras to the robot, so now as it manufactures the piece, it uses computer vision algorithms to evaluate how it looks compared to the original designs," he says. "We have shown that the technology works and can scale." The future of 3D printing looks good.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
