Inside the shape-shifting VR factory of manufacturing's future

31 March 2016

Factory 2050, the AMRC's latest development and the first on the University of Sheffield's new Advanced Manufacturing Campus, has been featured by New Scientist magazine.

The AMRC with Boeing's new Factory 2050 facility. Credit: Bond Bryan.

The article, by Jacob Aron, headline "Wait, I'll reconfigure" quotes AMRC chief technical officer Prof Sam Turner and Integrated Manufacturing Group control engineer Steve Bowles.

Aron writes: "Factory 2050 feels like a toy shop, but the researchers aren't just tinkering. The goal is to get the ideas straight into industrial use, rather than letting them languish in the lab.

"The place is sparkling clean, and smells like a newly furnished IKEA, but it's gearing up to change the way whole industries work. The brains behind the project are rethinking the manufacturing process itself, aiming to change how we make everything from airplanes to nuclear power plants.

"By linking together all the cameras, lasers and other sensors the team can create a digital twin of the building that will monitor every manufacturing process and perhaps individual components."

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