TEDGlobal 2013
Bastian Schaefer: A 3D-printed jumbo jet?
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Designer Bastian Schaefer shows off a speculative design for the future of jet planes, with a skeleton inspired by strong, flexible, natural forms and by the needs of the world's, ahem, growing population. Imagine an airplane that's full of light and space -- and built up from generative parts in a 3D printer.
Bastian Schaefer - Aircraft engineer
Bastian Schaefer and a team of designers at Airbus have been imagining the high-concept future of the jet airlplane -- in a future with less fuel and more passengers. Full bio
Bastian Schaefer and a team of designers at Airbus have been imagining the high-concept future of the jet airlplane -- in a future with less fuel and more passengers. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:12
What do we know about the future?
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Difficult question, simple answer: nothing.
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We cannot predict the future.
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We only can create a vision of the future, how it might be,
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a vision which reveals disruptive ideas, which is inspiring,
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and this is the most important reason
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which breaks the chains of common thinking.
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There are a lot of people
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who created their own vision about the future,
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for instance, this vision here from the early 20th century.
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It says here that this is the ocean plane of the future.
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It takes only one and a half days to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
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Today, we know that this future vision didn't come true.
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So this is our largest airplane which we have,
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the Airbus A380, and it's quite huge,
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so a lot of people fit in there
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and it's technically completely different
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than the vision I've shown to you.
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I'm working in a team with Airbus,
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and we have created our vision
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about a more sustainable future of aviation.
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So sustainability is quite important for us,
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which should incorporate social
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but as well as environmental and economic values.
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So we have created a very disruptive structure
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which mimics the design of bone, or a skeleton,
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which occurs in nature.
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So that's why it looks maybe a little bit weird,
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especially to the people who deal with structures in general.
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But at least it's just a kind of artwork
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to explore our ideas about a different future.
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What are the main customers of the future?
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So, we have the old, we have the young,
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we have the uprising power of women,
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and there's one mega-trend which affects all of us.
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These are the future anthropometrics.
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So our children are getting larger, but at the same time
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we are growing into different directions.
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So what we need is space inside the aircraft,
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inside a very dense area.
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These people have different needs.
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So we see a clear need of active health promotion,
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especially in the case of the old people.
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We want to be treated as individuals.
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We like to be productive throughout the entire travel chain,
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and what we are doing in the future is
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we want to use the latest man-machine interface,
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and we want to integrate this and show this in one product.
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So we combined these needs with technology's themes.
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So for instance, we are asking ourselves,
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how can we create more light?
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How can we bring more natural light into the airplane?
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So this airplane has no windows anymore, for example.
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What about the data and communication software
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which we need in the future?
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My belief is that the airplane of the future
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will get its own consciousness.
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It will be more like a living organism
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than just a collection of very complex technology.
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This will be very different in the future.
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It will communicate directly
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with the passenger in its environment.
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And then we are talking also about materials,
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synthetic biology, for example.
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And my belief is that we will get more and more
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new materials which we can put into structure later on,
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because structure is one of the key issues in aircraft design.
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So let's compare the old world with the new world.
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I just want to show you here what we are doing today.
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So this is a bracket of an A380 crew rest compartment.
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It takes a lot of weight,
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and it follows the classical design rules.
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This here is an equal bracket for the same purpose.
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It follows the design of bone.
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The design process is completely different.
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At the one hand, we have 1.2 kilos,
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and at the other hand 0.6 kilos.
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So this technology, 3D printing, and new design rules
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really help us to reduce the weight,
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which is the biggest issue in aircraft design,
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because it's directly linked to greenhouse gas emissions.
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Push this idea a little bit forward.
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So how does nature build its components and structures?
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So nature is very clever. It puts all the information
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into these small building blocks, which we call DNA.
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And nature builds large skeletons out of it.
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So we see a bottom-up approach here,
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because all the information, as I said, are inside the DNA.
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And this is combined with a top-down approach,
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because what we are doing in our daily life
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is we train our muscles, we train our skeleton,
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and it's getting stronger.
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And the same approach can be applied to technology as well.
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So our building block is carbon nanotubes, for example,
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to create a large, rivet-less skeleton at the end of the day.
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How this looks in particular, you can show it here.
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So imagine you have carbon nanotubes growing
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inside a 3D printer,
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and they are embedded inside a matrix of plastic,
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and follow the forces which occur in your component.
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And you've got trillions of them.
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So you really align them to wood,
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and you take this wood and make morphological optimization,
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so you make structures, sub-structures,
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which allows you to transmit electrical energy or data.
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And now we take this material, combine this
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with a top-down approach,
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and build bigger and bigger components.
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So how might the airplane of the future look?
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So we have very different seats which adapt
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to the shape of the future passenger,
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with the different anthropometrics.
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We have social areas inside the aircraft
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which might turn into a place
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where you can play virtual golf.
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And finally, this bionic structure,
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which is covered by a transparent
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biopolymer membrane, will really change radically
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how we look at aircrafts in the future.
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So as Jason Silva said,
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if we can imagine it, why not make it so?
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See you in the future. Thank you.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Bastian Schaefer - Aircraft engineerBastian Schaefer and a team of designers at Airbus have been imagining the high-concept future of the jet airlplane -- in a future with less fuel and more passengers.
Why you should listen
Bastian Schaefer is the Cabin and Cargo Innovation Manager at Airbus Operations -- and leads a group of far-thinking engineers who are building out a concept plane. Previously at Airbus, he worked on the development of A380 stairs and components for in-flight entertainment. Between 2006 and 2011 Bastian worked at Bertrand Ingenieurbüro GmbH working on projects with C&D Zodiac Development A350XWB Lavatories, AT Kearney and EADS Technology Watch Consulting. He considers himself a mechanical engineer and has a special interest in cars.
Bastian Schaefer | Speaker | TED.com