China is set to push industrial engineering to its limit by 3D printing a 590-foot dam in Tibet using robots that could provide up to 5 billion kilowatt-hours of hydro electricity per year - and the entire process is set to be automated using artificial intelligence.
Wulong Dam, China. Credit: Old Man Stocker / Shutterstock
An aerial view of the Wulong Dam in Chongqing, China. Credit: Old Man Stocker / Shutterstock
The team of engineers behind the projects are set to put the hypothesis of a recent research paper to the test, with the planned construction of the Yangqu plant expected to last around two years.
3D printing has been used for some crazy things in the past: printing prostheses, medical implants, organs, and even food or, more ambitiously, houses. But this new project, if it goes through, could really put the technology to the test.
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The news, which was first broken by the South China Morning Post, claims the entire project is set to be unmanned and that everything, from the printers, to the bulldozers, pavers and rollers, will be autonomously controlled by AI.
Sensors on the bulldozers will allow the AI to monitor the stability of the structure as it is printed. Like most other types of 3D printing, it will be printed in layers.
For the entire printing process, unmanned machinery is set to deliver materials to the construction site. This could, as the paper reports, remove "human error" from the equation.
When complete, the dam will be nearly half as tall as the world's tallest dam, the Nurek Dam in Tajikistan, which clocks in at a whopping 300 metres (984 feet). Arguably the most famous dam in the world, the Hoover Dam, located in Nevada, is around 221 metres (726 feet) fall and the structure could last for around 10,000 years.
Not much information about the logistics or specifics of the dam has been revealed yet and construction has not begun.
The idea of automating huge structures such as this forms one of the key pillars of Industry 4.0 and using robots to replace humans in jobs that are potentially dangerous or where human error could cause a chain reaction.
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However, this has also seen significant backlash, with critics arguing that robots replacing humans could lead to higher levels of unemployment or requiring significant reskilling initiatives.
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