China is building a massive new hydroelectric dam with AI-controlled robots and 3D printing technology

2022-05-11T15:37:00-04:00

China is using artificial intelligence to effectively turn a dam project on the Tibetan Plateau into the world’s largest 3D printer, according to scientists involved in the project. The 180 metre (590 feet) high Yangqu hydropower plant will be built slice by slice – using unmanned excavators, trucks, bulldozers, pavers and rollers, all controlled by AI – in the same additive manufacturing process used in 3D printing.

The Yangqu dam project is set to finish in two years and is being overseen by Tsinghua University’s Liu Tianyun, who recently argued that developments in 3D printing have made the technology “identical to nature.”

Its purported future annual output of nearly 5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity for Henan Province is a full billion more than that of the Hoover Dam, whose WPA-era construction was similarly the product of two decades worth of advancements in engineering and construction technologies.

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China is building a massive new hydroelectric dam with AI-controlled robots and 3D printing technology