By Mark Devlin, IEN Staff
May 1, 2008
Autonomous Manufacturing & Supply
Within ten years, Dr. Kevin Creehan, who at the time of this writing is a Research Assistant Professor specializing in manufacturing at Virginia Tech, predicts that technologies that are used in today’s DARPA Challenges will become evident in manufacturing, using the term “autonomous manufacturing”; that is, manufacturing processes that actually think for (and move) themselves. So strong is his belief in autonomous manufacturing, Creehan and a partner, Jeff Schultz, have started their own company (www.schultz-creehan.com/) to pursue this path.
At first, the pursuit will involve vehicles operating autonomously in material handling environments—using vision and GPS technologies, for example, to navigate through warehouses in the most time- and cost-efficient manners (without embedded guides or preprogrammed paths). Rather, these autonomous vehicles will not only be able to see, but automatically compensate for unexpectedly blocked aisles, for instance.
With IEN’s predicted marriage of UHF and RFID, the world of supply chain reporting will be expanded to include not only warehouse-to-warehouse logging, but also be tied into vehicle-based GPS navigation systems such that products in-transit (such as automobiles) will be able to automatically report their whereabouts en-route. Other networked supply chain options will also come into play, such as demand-based rerouting. For example, let’s say that a customer in Pittsburgh, PA, orders a new Impala, and a vehicle with the desired options is already on a car carrier within Ohio. Today, it could be determined that the vehicle exists and is somewhere between its depot and Cleveland. It would be delivered to that dealer in Cleveland. Tomorrow, a fully-connected supply chain will communicate not only that vehicle’s specific whereabouts, but also tie into the navigation system, identify that vehicle to the truck driver, and reroute that shipment in order for that specific vehicle to be delivered in Pittsburgh. Such systems will also be useful in the event of a Katrina-like disaster, automatically rerouting on-the-road shipments as required to best serve the affected area with medical supplies, for example.
Backend systems will of course evolve to support such activities, no longer being programmed from Point A to Point B (or turn-on to task), but for flexibility and, eventually, AI and system-based decision-making—a pursuit that will extend far beyond the supply chain and into not only the computers that we use every day, but also the machines used in a factory. The long-overdue dream of AI will finally be realized. Forget whiteboards and dry markers—the machines will know what to do, what to make—even producing a certain level of quality for some applications and customers, and automatically shift to ultra-precise output for aerospace companies, for instance.
Consider the words of Farrokh Mistree, Professor of Mechanical Engineering in The Systems Realization Laboratory of the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Today, human life and computers are linked inexorably, integrated, and we are moving toward the age of cyborgs.” The rise of the machines is most certainly predictable.
The Engineer (and Student) of the Future
Who’s going to design and implement such technically lavish and complex systems? Engineers, of course. Many engineers today, however, are focused on a single discipline, for instance, mechanical, electrical, electronic, civil.
Tomorrow’s innovative technological minds will be trained far beyond that scope such that they’ll be able to easily consider a product’s design, its manufacture, even its packaging and its during- and end-of-life environmental impact. So powerful are technological forces today that even non-engineers will be required to take engineering courses. This one’s not difficult to predict, as it’s already begun at, for example, Princeton University.
The university’s Center for Innovation in Engineering Education, CIEE, established within the past three years, “...aims to prepare all students—both engineers and non-engineers—to be leaders in an increasingly complex, technology-driven society.” According to H. Vincent Poor, Dean, School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton, “...engineering serves as a bridge between the natural sciences on one hand and the humanities and social sciences on the other. It is our responsibility as engineering educators to make sure that all of our students, whether they are majoring in engineering or not, are technologically literate.”
Another program at Princeton, called The Grand Challenges Initiative, is an integrated research and teaching program that weds the Princeton Environmental Institute, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International affairs. The program meshes environmental, technological, and public policy, preparing students to tackle problems in which environmental issues, for instance, are approached in a larger framework of societies, economies, and politics.
Other Predictions
Many other technologies and ideas will influence the factory, engineering, and products of the future. For example, the role of robotics will—finally—expand, smartly and dramatically. Nanotechnology will affect everything around us, from the everyday household products that we use to the medications we take for illness—and, of course, computers and processors. Nanotech, still basically in its early stages, will first be an extremely high-performance alternative to, and then a replacement for, silicon-based computing. Before jumping into nanotube computing, however, note that research has already begun to connect processor chips with lasers. (See Additional Reading below.)
Some centuries-old concepts and experiments will also be realized in the not too distant future, such as wireless power, first explored by Nikola Tesla. With that in mind, the "future" clearly isn’t linear; it isn’t always new. Sometimes, the future is merely the point at which ideas from a very distant past are realized and flourish.
Continue to Part 6: IEN 75th Predictions—Robotics...
REFERENCES
ADDITIONAL READING
A Sampler of Cutting Edge Engineering Research
Princeton University
Learn more...
Replacing Wire With Laser, Sun Tries to Speed Up Data
New York Times, March 24, 2008
Learn more...
Special Reports: 10 Emerging Technologies 2008
MIT Technology Review
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Forecasts For the Next 25 Years
World Future Society
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Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2007
Wired, December 27, 2007
Learn more...
