Iron Man lab could be the factory of the future
Having now watched Iron Man, I can express relief that it is a rare sample of a movie that is as good as the comic deserves. I believe that after the Batman Begins movie we have entered a new superhero cinema era and that from now on comic heroes will not be used just for the sake of making cash-cow films… Do you hear Fantastic Four producers?
One of the aspects that I found intriguing is Tony Stark’s lab -or shall I say factory?- and the way he went about making things. Ignoring the speed at which things were designed, made and tested, we can only admit that it was all a very convincing way of showing where Iron Man’s technical superiority arose from.
The actual machines used, the robotic arms with plenty degrees of freedom and AI, the computers, the user interfaces, everything shows that the concept was based on detailed study of existing flexible industrial production and combined extremely well with ideas of what future IT and production hopes to be like in the 21st century.
The most impressive part was the production-on-demand system used. In other words, conceive an item or a system, model it in 3D and actually build and test it! This is not far at all from what modern flexible manufacturing is aiming for. To build customised stuff that can be manufactured down to the quantity of one at a time in a reasonable time period. Or at least achieve that aim with prototype work, and then extend it to small production runs.
Interfacing with machines was also really impressive. Evidently, menus and touch screens are not good enough and the most common communication tool, voice, was extensively used for instructions and tuning. Do not ask me how voice instructions can be utilised in a room full of colleagues screaming on the phone, however it is a thing to certainly come…
All in all, I think futuristic technical concepts were combined superbly with awesome 3D graphics and existing machinery -Audi did some really clever promotion work here. There is no doubt that Iron Man 2 will have equally dazzling graphics and characters, let’s hope that it will manage to stay fresh like the current movie…
[...] One of the aspects that I found intriguing is Tony Stark’s lab -or shall I say factory?- and the way he went about making things. Ignoring the speed at which things were designed, made and tested, we can only admit that it was all a very convincing way of showing where Iron Man’s technical superiority arose from. (continued) [...]
May 6th, 2008 at 2:00 pm[...] heroes are having a huge comeback this summer, Iron Man has only been the start. Dark Knight, the new much awaited Batman film is arriving on the July 25, [...]
May 20th, 2008 at 2:53 pm