Autodesk's Massimiliano Moruzzi: Mad Max or Visionary

Max, as he lets himself be called, is an engineering stud. He is also quite the freethinker. 

He started his career in composites as a math teacher after graduating with a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Milan. Somehow, Autodesk managed to acquire Max to be a senior principal scientist and part of the company’s office of the CTO, as well as to work on its generative design application. We wonder, how he can be contained, confined to one subject. Mixing materials together, making them behave in unforeseen ways, defying preset concepts of manufacturing—that’s only a start for Max. Why stop at inert ingredients? Why not introduce a spark? Why not make materials that are reactive, smart … alive?

Injecting life into inanimate objects … where have we heard that before? Oh, yes…Frankenstein! We’re in the converted Tobacco Docks of London, where Max is delivering the keynote at Autodesk University. A hundred miles away in the seaside town of Bournemouth lie the remains of Mary Shelley, author or the classic horror story. It was exactly 200 years ago  she wrote about adding life to a mixture of parts with a spark.

Max mesmerized the crowd at the invitation-only Leadership Forum, with a rollicking romp through composites, 3D printing, biology and life. We’ve seen keynotes before. Lots of them. But none like this. Not delivered by one who can leave you questioning everything, from bridges to planes to materials—and the institutions that believe in them. And then, scales fall from our eyes, and we see how stupid we have been.

The creation of life may be a stretch for engineers, but under Max’s spell, it all seems so believable. His knowledge of science and engineering together with the credibility of his accomplishments makes for a spellbinding story—one that challenges long-standing beliefs. We view his breakthrough accomplishments, from science to an engineered product as he moves from one technical adventure to another, like a bullet ricocheting down a hall.

"What is the worst enemy of the bridge?" he asks. Hands go up. Of course, we know—we’re engineers who build bridges after all. But we don’t have the right answer for Max. He moves on, but comes back to the topic later to reveal the correct answer: the enemy of the bridge is the bridge itself. Bridge materials are so heavy that most of the bridge’s materials is used to support the structure itself. Steel and concrete are the biggest culprits. 

“It is not your fault,” Max consoles us mere mortal engineers. But we know we have only ourselves to blame. Your materials are unsophisticated, homogenous and isotropic. What natural structural material is like that? Not wood. Not our flesh and bones. “You are not like that.”

It’s a good start, says Max. Carbon fiber would be better. 

While the strength-to-weight ratio of carbon fiber composite parts is laudable and well known, it is the environmental benefits of the material that make carbon fiber our true savior.

We cannot sustain our population by building with the same materials that we have been using. Concrete and steel take a tremendous amount of energy to mine and produce. “Carbon may be black, but it is greener than steel and concrete,” Max tells us. Also, it is lower maintenance and relatively abundant.

We see one of Max’s first creations. Out of Lockheed’s Skunkworks came the all-composite, giant black boomerang shaped UAV that is all but invisible to radar. It may have been the RQ-170 Sentinel UAV, aka, the Beast of Kandahar, named after missions in Afghanistan. We may never know. We are told to look closely. “It has no reebs [Italian for rib, Ed.],” says Max. Indeed, most of the aircraft’s structure is made in one piece. A typical plane wing consists of an assembly of ribs, panels, struts and other structural parts along with buckets of rivets that hold it all together, which to Max’s unjaundiced eye, is nothing but a sloppy mess of parts, most of which are unimaginative prismatic shapes that exist only due to the manufacturing we have in place, with little consideration of optimally applied material. Given that an aircraft has millions of parts, Max sees that it as many interfaces that are just a failure waiting to happen. 

We are mired in using the materials and processes we know. With the carbon fiber one-piece plane—a flying wing—we put the right material in the right place to start with. Long strands of carbon fiber are put in place, along with the matrix material, by a robotic arm withal degrees of freedom intact, allowing it to go over and under the wing, spinning a complete aircraft structure. 

This approach does seem natural: the fibers can be laid along a direct line that will experience the highest loads[MG1] .

We hear about optimization. “How can you optimize isotropic material, like steel. By definition, you cannot.”

We are constraining ourselves, says Max, but jumping to what we think are answers to problems. He quotes da Vinci (“What can I say? I’m Italian.”), with the idea that a problem, if ill defined, will not find a proper solution. What do we do when we need a part? We start drafting using normal structural shapes. We specify materials we are familiar with and are comfortable with. We choose symmetry and straight lines (“like the room we are in”) because that is what we are comfortable with. 

Additive Manufacturing in Tanks—It’s Unnatural

Additive manufacturing (AM), what some technologists would have you believe can make anything, is not the solution. AM sees things in slices and attempt to recreate them in layers, which it deposits one layer at a time, in a tank. It’s not natural. “Your body isn’t made in a tank, in layers,” he says. “I want to make something in the air, with no support structures.”

We’ve grown accustomed to mass production. “But I want everyone to have their own house, their own car.” That’s not possible once we have stampings and molds. All the auto companies are asking for flexible factories. But they use molds, and by their nature, molds will make the same thing over and over. “If you want to have your own car, it’s not going to happen because they’d have to change a whole factory.”

But with a digital part, anything can happen. Digital parts can be customized with fast computers and algorithms. Autodesk has made generative design one of its main initiatives, where a given problem or constraint will create various shapes that will work. As opposed to an engineer jumping to a conclusion and making the shape with straight simple shapes and symmetry. 

Max tells us about his visit to Pier 9, Autodesk’s technical center, where he spied a robot. “It was not a happy robot. It was moving boxes from A to B. What kind of life is that? When we got it to do more creative things, it was happier,” he says.

But even a happy robot is not enough. “The part it makes can be alive,” says Max. “Wouldn’t that be the best? The part and the robot could talk to each other. The part can tell its maker what it is experiencing.

“So, I got a robot arm, a FANUC. I added a material extruder. I hacked it. As an engineer, you never want to keep it as it is. You want to make it work better. You have to customize. We’re not happy with the part out of the box.” 

Plus, the robot can put ingredients where they are needed, mix materials on the fly. It can embed electronics. 

He pulls out an airfoil section that is made out of carbon fiber and has no visible wiring or electrical leads or batteries. He pushes a switch on a cord, and lights on the wing light up. Like a magician, he defies us to figure out his trick.

Clearly, he has embedded conductive pathways into the carbon fiber. Less obvious is the battery. Like … where is it? 

A battery can be any shape—a car ... a building can be a battery.

Injection conductive elements in a device can make a part behave like it has nerves. It can feel and respond to touch. What could be more human. A chair, a table have something to say—If you will listen. A chair can give feedback on pressure, make adjustments for comfort, maybe adjust temperatures. A chair manufacturer can go from selling an inanimate product to an experience in comfort. 

Max questions the use of CubeSats to create a global communication network. These are the cube shaped satellites, of which 800 have been put into orbit. Why put the networks up there? he asks. Why above us? Why can’t we be the network, or our cars, or our buildings?

Well, for one thing, we and the objects we make don’t cover the Earth and reach remote locations….

But Max is not seeking answers as much as he is asking provocative questions. An hour later, and he is still rolling along. 

What was that he said? He did not say controlling your mind, did he? It must be the jet lag. Or did the rolling train of tech adventure and friendly provocation just come off the rails. Playing it back, it made sense. Your senses are all based on chemical reaction. If we can control the chemicals, why can’t we control what we see and feel? 

Come to think of it, it is not a new theory. Think Timothy Leary and his adventure in LSD, a synthetic chemical. 

Back under the spell of Massimiliano Moruzzi, the adventures continue. What else that we might have thought to be bizarre and outlandish is actually doable, desirable … fundable? 

We don’t want it to stop. Can someone give Max his own show?