IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2011 - 8

NEWS AND VIEWS

Engineering from Prank to Product
By Jeanne Dietsch

hile IEEE Spectrum
"Automaton" blog covers
new technologies daily, the
role of a quarterly column
should be to provide context and discuss the role of researchers and engineers, and their creations in society.
This column focuses on the role of
researchers and engineers in helping
the public understand the continuum
from concept to product, using innovations in three-dimensional (3-D)
printing as an example.
Traditionally, April Fools' Day has
been a great time for technopranks. Last
April's favorite tricks included GMail
Motion, a gesture-recognition interface
for opening and sending e-mail. The
credulousness of users and the press
for these pranks tend to swing between
na€ıvete and skepticism with the state of
the technology in question. New concepts excite science-fiction fantasies.
People believe almost anything until
the prototypes and hobby/researchquality products appear. Then, the
expectations exceed reality, and the
bubble pops into mass disbelief of
any claim. Skepticism often peaks by
the time the engineers release early
consumer or industrial products that
are actually ready for market.
This counterproductive cycle creates an extra hurdle for pioneering
companies and products to overcome.
To modulate the cycle, researchers
and engineers can educate the press
and users (and their own company
marketers) about the position of their
work on the innovation continuum. Is
this a concept, prototype, hobby/

Date of publication: 13 September 2011

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

research, consumer, or an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9005 industrial product?
An interesting example recently in
the news is computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), now dubbed by the more
consumer-friendly name 3-D printing.
For 40 years, CAM parts have been automatically fabricated from computeraided designs (CADs) for automobiles.
As the price of industrial-quality CAM
equipment dropped from US$100,000 to
US$10,000, design engineers in all fields
used CAM for models and short runs.
Recently, the prices dropped again
to just above US$1,000 from MakerBot

Figure 2. 3-D printing for the masses.
(Photo courtesy of MakerBot Industries.)

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2011.942480

Figure 1. 3-D printing for engineers.
(Photo courtesy of HP.)

SEPTEMBER 2011

Industries and Bits from Bytes. Popular media are already hailing such 3-D
printers as a first step toward stopping
factory outsourcing.
In fact, these products are hobbyist/
research systems. They can be purchased as components or kits. They
offer sample objects for modification,
including their own parts. Avid techie
user groups supply extensive online
support, perfect for upper-level education. Consumers, however, might
be disappointed or dismayed.
Why would a typical consumer even
want a 3-D printer? MakerBot advertises Thing-O-Matic for replication of
difficult-to-find plastic parts, such as a
bathtub stopper. There is some market
for customization, such as trophies or
knickknacks. Conceivably, customization might extend to foodstuffs such as
ice cream or chocolate. Perhaps, distributed production is an important advantage than replication or customization.
Two-dimensional (2-D) printing metamorphosed from a central process to a
largely local one as printer prices dropped. Will low-cost 3-D printing encourage manufacturers to decentralize?
The difference between 2-D and 3-D
printing is that a single type of paper can
handle any 2-D object the user cares to
print. However, how many 3-D objects
made of antilock braking system (ABS)
plastic will people want? And if the
printers expand their repertory of raw
materials, how many formulations and
colors will people want to inventory?
Orit Shaer of Wellesley College and
Doug Densmore of Boston University
are applying SynBioSys collaborative
CAD/CAM modeling to objects that
come in fairly standardized forms:
genes for genomic problem solving.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2011