3D Systems has entered into a multi-year development agreement with Motorola Mobility LLC, a Google company, to create a continuous high-speed 3D printing production platform and fulfilment system in support of Motorola’s Project Ara. Project Ara aims to develop highly-customised, modular smartphones that afford users the opportunity to make functional and aesthetic choices about their device.
The potential benefits of modular hardware here are huge: imagine personal portable devices that can be customised for your work, as a doctor via additional sensors, as a lecturer via modular projector hardware, as a driver for modules that aid integration with your future cars’ computerised systems, essentially expand the breadth and range of functionality of the portable devices that some insist on still calling a phone (it’s a computer!) beyond software into hardware.
The future is bright. And a great deal of the future will be 3D printed.
