WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We are inventing new materials all the time, and we’re also re-inventing old ones … Love the Exponential Future? Join our XPotential Community, future proof yourself with courses from XPotential University, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. Recently a team of scientists from MIT managed to grow...
As automakers like BMW explore new 3D printed materials and technologies to minimize cars’ weight and emissions some companies, like Woodoo, a material science company based out of France who produce genetically engineered woods, are stepping up to the plate and coming up with new materials innovations which could soon be coming to a vehicle near you.
The new material in action
Woodoo is the brainchild of French architect Timothée Boitouzet, and their mission is to “blend nature with technology to design the materials of the future.” To this end, Woodoo recently unveiled their newest product – transparent wood. And if you ask me, if you made a desk out of this product and put a reactive display under it then you could make some radically different furniture. Imagine, for example, using the tech to build a keyboard into a desk or other sort of innovation. Go nuts – wood just got reinvented.
Boitouzet got the inspiration for genetically engineered modified wood from Japanese construction culture.
“This material that we considered an old material, without innovation, was actually super smart. This got me excited about wood.” He also predicts that wood will be “the material of the 22nd century,” similarly to how steel was the go-to construction material of the 19th century.
Per the company’s website, Woodoo creates the augmented wood by extracting air and lignin from it, then reinforcing it with a bio-based polymer. This modification endows the material with strength and fire-resistance. Woodoo envisions multiple applications for the “augmented wood,” especially in the automotive and construction sectors. Automakers could integrate the wood into vehicle cockpits for a “tactile dashboard” like the ones in the pictures.
Using the material would also help to reduce the vehicle’s overall weight while producing less pollution, and bring environmentally-conscious automakers, such as GM, one step closer to achieving their emissions-reduction goals.
According to Goldman Sachs’ recent virtual and augmented reality report, experts predict that this segment will grow by over 50 percent each year, eventually reaching $95 billion by 2025, and, unsurprisingly, Woodoo is already partnering with some companies to integrate the modified wood into aircraft and vehicle displays.
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