How Will AI Impact Machine Design?

How Will AI Impact Machine Design?

Artificial intelligence is a reality today. In most cases, we have found that rigid and adaptive computing complements human expertise rather than completely replacing it. Such is the case with the task of engineering and designing new and more useful machines.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are changing how we design machines and products, make our industrial equipment more accurate and efficient, and provide engineers with ways to optimize and automate their workflows. Here's how.

Generative design with AI

One particularly exciting application of AI in machine (and general product) design is manufacturing design. This is where artificial intelligence creates new products according to user-specified standards or intelligently improves existing products for added stability, durability or efficiency.

A product designer can specify the maximum amount of raw material to be used in the final design or its minimum strength. The algorithm finds multiple efficient and workable models that satisfy those criteria.

There are already applications for product design, including automotive body and engine parts design, for improved fuel efficiency that extends the service life span. With product design included in the workflow, a company has used intelligent design to reduce the weight of the component needed while improving its heat-management characteristics.

AI and Circular Economy

The global AI market is expected to be worth $ 59 billion by 2025. One big reason for this growth is to rethink important parts of the economy and rebuild from top to bottom, with the mainstream being thinner and smarter.

Every industry needs to become more careful and economical about making more energy-efficient, less waste and new products. Customers demand these things and call for a better environmental steward worldwide.

With big data, AI-led product and machine design companies can help realize significant financial and other benefits:

Big data enables companies to gather the insights their AI tools need to make intelligent design repetitions over time.

Adding user and aftermarket data sets in Intelligent Product Design makes industrial machines and advanced user-level items more user-serviceable, longer-lasting or easier to restore and resell. This means fewer electronics and other physical waste is going into the landfill before its time.

Industrial equipment and enterprise planning platforms benefit from data collected from vendors, customers, and the wider industry, making more strategic decisions about when to allocate assets and when to meet demand.

Self-aware industrial machines

Artificial intelligence makes self-monitoring machines a reality. Production tools such as industrial conveyor belts, automated guided vehicles, and robotic weapons and other tools are built with data collection and intelligence from the ground up.

The quality and affordable price of modern sensors is the linchpin. Production equipment and autonomous vehicles create a picture of how information is collected and what is happening around them. It has enormous implications for improving the safety and efficiency of industrial equipment and robots.

Shifting machine vision is critical to the task of inspecting parts for quality and safety.

Another is that machine learning can help predict future failure beyond what humans can do alone. Sensor data detect and flagged temperature fluctuations, abnormal vibrations and the presence of contaminants at any time a machine is operating. It pays attention to maintenance items before equipment failures or product defects.

Improved cobots In addition to sensor-driven self-aware manufacturing equipment, artificial intelligence can also help cobots to make safer and more useful labor with their human counterparts.

Improvements in artificial intelligence allow robotic systems to work safely with humans in dangerous tasks, but are more sensitive to physical hazards. Welding heavy parts are just one example - the welding industry is expected to face job shortages in 2022 and beyond, which is a major target for this technology.

Deploying intelligent machines here is a way to transform existing talent into high-complexity and high-paying work, or safer but more sensitive work, This applies to distribution and manufacturing facilities that require a high degree of accuracy in the safe and efficient movement of high load materials or customer fulfillment. The race for patented-valued designs for automated order pickers and stowing robots continues in full steam and shows what's possible in warehouse and supply chain environments.

Intelligently designed infrastructure

Artificial Intelligence enables our independent infrastructure and the machines that build it to be more capable of "independent thinking" in the design, construction and maintenance stages. The Netherlands has a 40-foot-long bridge designed using machine intelligence, and, as the designers say, 3D-printing robots are "printed in midair" by self-directed.

AI is not only an ally in the design of this bridge but also in its maintenance.

Designers are expected to include sensors in the bridge's structure, which will monitor how well it works and whether it’s physical health is fluctuating.

The exciting times ahead These are exciting times for product designers, civil engineers, robotics experts, machines and company strategists.

Artificial Intelligence is already changing how we monitor the machines we rely on, dramatically increase the self-awareness and efficiency of those machines, and help us find new products and new solutions to talent shortages.