IKEA self-assembling stools and tomorrow's substance programming technologies

In his speech at Autodesk University in Moscow, Carlos Olguin spoke about the very interesting research that his team is engaged with, together with leading scientists from world universities. It was about the programming technologies of the substance, both living and non-living, self-organizing of various structures, the future and self-assembling stools from IKEA. In the wake of the presentation I was able to ask Carlos a few additional questions. Under the cut, our conversation and video of his speech.



- Carlos, what is the Cyborg project (1) you are working on?

- This is a meta-platform for the design, analysis, simulation, printing, automation of all new emerging areas, including 3D printing. The project is cloud-oriented, with its help we want to lower the “access level” for new participants.

Now on the Internet, amazing new businesses are emerging and flourishing: social networks, cloud technologies. But they would not exist if Assembler was the most developed programming language. As a software company, we track the development paths of new economies and prepare tools to make such areas accessible to a wide range of researchers and developers. I think this is the most important thing. Yes, of course, we are counting on financial success, but it seems to me even more important to update our own ideas about how to create values ​​in the modern world, how to make them renewable, reduce environmental pollution, how to raise living standards and so on. All this requires other, new approaches to the design of tools.

- In your presentation, you showed a programmable molecular model in which the red and green balls of different algorithms attracted to each other and repelled each other, forming some kind of moving structures. This model in its behavior fairly resembled the old mathematical game "Life" (Game of Life). Is this analogy right?

- Yes, only my example was in 3D. This game is also a set of rules from which a certain system emerges, one of the examples of programming a substance, it is no coincidence that it is called Game of Life.

- However, “Life” is characterized by the fact that the structures created in it sooner or later inevitably become fairly stable (even if they are in motion), and the model shown has constantly changed.

- It all depends on the rules, this is solved by programming the substance. The structure can be both stable and constantly changing, if you set the necessary rules. And yet - we all consist of the chaos of molecules and cells that are in motion, constantly colliding with each other. But out of this chaotic movement, order is born, life is arranged on a nano-scale, and perhaps these stable structures in the game “Life” at the nano-level are just as unstable. In fact, you still noticed the structure in the demonstrated example with red and green molecules, so perhaps this demonstration more accurately conveys what happens in life, in our bodies, than the game.

- But if we are talking about large-scale, not cellular, 4D printing (2), then such static nature is important - no one wants his self-assembled stool from IKEA to evolve into a floor lamp at night.

- Yes, but it must be borne in mind that in such models the processes occur much slower than at the molecular level, the scale is completely different. We ourselves change over time, grow old, and eventually die. But at a particular point in time, we are quite stable.

- You are talking more about bioprinting at the nano-level, in medicine, and not about 4D printing. Is it connected with the fact that bio-printing is here and now, and 4D printing is a matter for the future?

“Well, until the final“ maturing ”of bioprinting, there is still time, perhaps even many years, but now it has specific uses. Companies ... so Organovo is already actively engaged in this technology. But we are in motion, we are constantly exploring various possibilities, we are trying to consider directions that no one has thought of before. So, in general, I would say that high-grade bio printing is still far away.

But returning to your question about medicine - you need to understand that in its pure form, cell printing is not the only use of bioprinting. Already print food, for example. People like Lee Crowning from the University of Glasgow are searching for other uses for bioprinting. He is a genius, he has a lot of ideas in the field of printing chemical compounds, for example, individual medicines. His group invents a kind of conveyor: you print the fabric of the body, you print the chemical compound, you look at the impact this chemical compound has on the fabric. It creates an automatic process in which you can recreate the conditions of the disease and its treatment, significantly accelerating the discovery of new drugs. This example shows that even in medicine, researchers are still far from the realization of those promising prospects that are already visible. And I still do not say anything about the printing of full bodies.

- You showed large-scale models that changed in the water, how do you imagine them in real life? After all, if we are talking about cells, then this is living matter, and, for example, a chair is not living. How can technology help 4D printing? Or is it too early?

- Both I and many researchers consider scenarios in which materials are created that are capable of changing - not only gathering into a given structure, but also, for example, expanding, “curing” themselves or even multiplying. In this regard, the concepts of "living" and "inanimate" matter become quite vague, the only difference is in biological and non-biological origin. Materials with such characteristics, when they appear (and there are not yet), can also in principle be called “alive”. What we show now, what does prof. Skylar Tibbits from MIT, some elements, in particular self-assembly, can be reproduced in non-living materials, but this is only a vector, and you can only try to imagine where it will eventually lead us.

- What is the role of Autodesk in these processes? How do you see your involvement in them?

“We want to be the most important“ genome ”in the“ genome ”of future economies, which will flourish on the basis of similar research. To do this, we must strive to democratize these technologies so that more scientists and students have access to them. They can create unpredictable things, crossing knowledge from different areas. In order for this to happen, we need tools, a common platform, and this is what we are doing in the framework of the Project Cyborg.

- In the presentation there was a screenshot signed by Molecular Maya - is this some special version of Maya for nano-models?

- Yes, this is a plugin for Maya, which was made by Gael McGill (3), but in fact we want to go further, create a platform on which to explore and describe these new areas, as well as integrate them. Now, bioprinting infrequently involves the simulation of processes, for which Molecular Maya is intended, and we want such connections to flourish within the framework of the Cyborg Project.



Video recording of the performance of Carlos in Moscow:



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Notes.

1. Project “Cyborg” - www.autodeskresearch.com/projects/cyborg

2. Large-scale 4D printing, also known as human-scale 4D-printing: printing visible objects that change over time. For example, a chair from IKEA, which collects itself, being in certain conditions (in the light, in heat, etc.). More complex designs require constant changes. The fourth dimension in the title is time.

3. Gel McGill (Gaël McGill) on his website www.molecularmovies.com demonstrates videos created with the help of Molecular Maya.