Capture, compute, create, compose is changing the future of making things: Tom Wujec of Autodesk

With the rise of machine learning and its impact on the news ways of making things, Business Today talks to Tom Wujec, Fellow at the American engineering, and animation software company Autodesk, about the next level of design thinking for achieving breakthrough results.

Wujec: Yes, certainly. Capture, compute, create, compose is changing the future of making things. I have been spending some time with Nike, where they were working on a shoe for a gold medal athlete to create the perfect running shoe for her. They 'captured' the property of her feet and form, and put it in a scanner. They calculated the dynamics of the pressure curve of her feet and also the motion during turning. They create a digital model of her feet, generated designs, and fabricated the shoe for her.

It's the marriage, the synthesis of the physical and digital world. So the future of making is bringing more of ourselves, and almost having superhuman power, to sense the world, to think or compute, to be able to manipulate matter. That's really the exciting part! There is another company called Feetz, where you send photos of your feet from your cell phone to them, and they will 3D print the sandals perfect for your feet.