2 ms·

It's certainly cool that our computers and manufacturing capabilities are now able to pull off such optimisation, but this has been going on for a while; compar

It's certainly cool that our computers and manufacturing capabilities are now able to pull off such optimisation, but this has been going on for a while; compare the box-like car bodies of the 80s to the curved aerodynamics of today. Also, I'd guess this "alien style" has a lot to do with the user's choice of algorithm and representation. An alternative approach, e.g. building up by connecting tubes like scaffolding, or lego-like blocks, then I'd imagine the results may have a very different "style".

jerf 10y ago
"Also, I'd guess this "alien style" has a lot to do with the user's choice of algorithm and representation." I'd find that very likely. In the machine learning world the term "bias" means something more like "what the set of hypotheses the learning system can have is" rather than the human English definition, and my question would be, do the biases of the learning processes even encompass "fractal" solutions? They probably don't, because you would encode what is even manufacturable in the first place directly into the biases of the system, because otherwise the learning system is very likely to pop out an optimal solution that is not manufacturable at all. Nobody wants to manufacture a fractalline lattice, whereas given how Nature grows them they come up very naturally. On that note, another thing you have to watch out for with these solutions is that you didn't miss an issue in your optimization. I'm looking at the first picture in the article, at the middle solution. It has a very fine mesh at the very top. I hope that either that mesh isn't all that important, or that we are effectively-100% sure this part is never going to corrode or experience other manufacturing defects (excessively large metal crystals perhaps) that could cause such a fine tracery of metal to be not work the way the model is expecting. (Unless there is some on the inside, the third piece doesn't seem to have that problem, it looks a lot more robust.) Of course there are places where we can indeed be confident that corrosion is not an issue, and the parts could be tested; I'm not saying that this particular instance is guaranteed to be flawed, just using this as an example of the possible issues with this style of design.
espadrine 10y ago
> this "alien style" has a lot to do with the user's choice of algorithm and representation Very valid point: part of why they can focus solely on optimizing those objects is that they no longer account for ease of manufacturing. And they can do so thanks to 3D printing.

jerf 10y ago

"Also, I'd guess this "alien style" has a lot to do with the user's choice of algorithm and representation." I'd find that very likely. In the machine learning world the term "bias" means something more like "what the set of hypotheses the learning system can have is" rather than the human English definition, and my question would be, do the biases of the learning processes even encompass "fractal" solutions? They probably don't, because you would encode what is even manufacturable in the first place directly into the biases of the system, because otherwise the learning system is very likely to pop out an optimal solution that is not manufacturable at all. Nobody wants to manufacture a fractalline lattice, whereas given how Nature grows them they come up very naturally. On that note, another thing you have to watch out for with these solutions is that you didn't miss an issue in your optimization. I'm looking at the first picture in the article, at the middle solution. It has a very fine mesh at the very top. I hope that either that mesh isn't all that important, or that we are effectively-100% sure this part is never going to corrode or experience other manufacturing defects (excessively large metal crystals perhaps) that could cause such a fine tracery of metal to be not work the way the model is expecting. (Unless there is some on the inside, the third piece doesn't seem to have that problem, it looks a lot more robust.) Of course there are places where we can indeed be confident that corrosion is not an issue, and the parts could be tested; I'm not saying that this particular instance is guaranteed to be flawed, just using this as an example of the possible issues with this style of design.

espadrine 10y ago

> this "alien style" has a lot to do with the user's choice of algorithm and representation Very valid point: part of why they can focus solely on optimizing those objects is that they no longer account for ease of manufacturing. And they can do so thanks to 3D printing.