The Next Byte Podcast · 24 Aug 2021 · 20m
Hosts Daniel and Forbode discuss two engineering breakthroughs: a Cornell University robot named Blackbird that uses AI to detect powdery mildew in grapes, developed by Professor Lance Cadle-Davidson and Professor Yu Jiang, reducing analysis time from six months to one day. They then cover NASA JPL researcher Douglas Hoffman's work on bulk metallic glass gears, which eliminates the need for lubrication and reduces manufacturing costs by enabling injection molding instead of machining.
Where this conversation describes AI being used to build or deliver a product. Part of the AI in practice tracker.
Engineering & simulationBlackbird robot with modified facial recognition AI6 months to 1 day
An AI-powered robot analyzed grape leaf samples for powdery mildew, reducing the analysis time from six months of manual labor to one day.
“Eugang is the engineer helping the biologist. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. So what he's doing is that he created this robot called Blackbird. And Blackbird is able to analyze, um, all these different samples with great accuracy.”
Speaker 1 · Hear it at 2:09
Engineering & simulationBulk metallic glass injection molding processcosts about half as much as machining gears
Researchers used injection molding to mass-manufacture gears from bulk metallic glass, eliminating the need for expensive, material-wasting precision machining of steel strain wave gears.
“they can make a glass-like metal, and the secret sauce here, you know, my favorite word is favorite phrase, is when you take these metal alloys, they melt it down to a liquid. They injection mold it into a mold or a die that gives it the shape that they want, the end geometry of the piece.”
Speaker 2 · Hear it at 14:52
makers and hobbyists
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