Thanks, meta-monkey! Glad someone else thinks it could be fun. :-) While I don't have time to do much on it at the moment, I'd suggest building tire factory simulations that can be used in a web browser is a step forward. After that, who knows?
== Some more rambles on the idea and its implications
Here is a bit of what is involved in making tires:
"How tires are made "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Michelin tyre manufacturing process"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It looks like each tire is made one at a time, with a lot of labor? And some danger to the worker with spinning wheels and cutting tools and so on. Not sure if all plants are still like that. It might explain why tires can be inconsistent. Safety can drives automaton because automation can generally assure higher quality (not always). Just looking at a guy cutting something by eye which is going to form a seem makes me wonder how often tires are a bit lopsided? No wonder they need balancing...
Costs for products generally drop when people can figure out how to get them produced in a continuous printing-like process such as big newspapers use (solar cells will probably soon be going that way). Often is is cheaper to re-engineer a product to be "printed" than to automate a more complex process. For example, if the tire material was produced by first creating a big sheet, and there was some way to the material could then be formed into shape at the end. Or if there was some new material that would phase change (maybe under radiation?) from liquid to solid and be super strong, then the process could be simplified by removing the need for the steel wires. But that all takes on quickly into research projects -- which have their own fun, but are different from just automating the current process. But no doubt there are people in graduate programs in material science and manufacturing engineering (probably getting subsistence wages there for years) who would love to research that kind of stuff.
Maybe the closest model to this right now is the Linux Kernel or, more broadly, a GNU/Linux distribution like Debian? There are a variety of interest parties involved with something like that. I theory, any Linux user would contribute, but in practice you need to go up a long learnign curve, and so few people do contribute, but some few do. Although by now most of the core Kernel developers are supported by companies that sell related products or services (like RedHat or most lately Samsung).
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
In the case of tires, who would tangentially benefit from a a great tire factory? In theory, perhaps makers of automobiles, professors of material science, people at places like the US DOT or NIST and similar might all get involved in setting up and running such a plant as something tangential to their other work?
The biggest issue in our current society would be getting the capital together to do that. However, in the short term, we could make a simulation of the factory in some framework.
A couple examples:
"Minecraft 100% Automatic Bread Factory (sounds like by a kid)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Minecraft cake factory"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Cake factory v2, Fully automatic!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Minecraft probably isn't the right framework for realistic simulations. The electrical engineering in Mniecraft would be fairly limited even with mods for improvements over redstone. However, these videos show that people can actually build factories just for fun. They even may build multiple versions of the factories, learning as they go.
Today, building physical factories is obviously harder than building Minecraft ones. But, as we get better robotics technologies, the gap between designing something from modules and seeing it constructed is going to shrink, in the same way 3D printing is shrinking that distance for individual small parts.
I guess the first thing we need (from a software developers point of view) is a good FOSS tool for simulating factories... I worked on some software to do that on a Symbolics in ZetaLisp about 27 years ago, and even then there were various vendors selling packaged solutions (mostly to understand physical layout and materials flow). I don't know what is available now. If I was going to write something from scratch, I'd focus on a 2D model of material flows, with the thought things could move to 3D later. Individual processes like rolling things on a drum could be done in 3D. I'd also model the human part of things, sicne we are talkign about it -- with some sort of notion of motivation based on (Dan Pink's theory) of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. I'd probably write it in JavaScript, just because I'm working in JavaScript now and then anyone could play with the simulation in a web browser, including perhaps gamify it somehow -- "Angry Tirebots?" :-) I know C or C++ is obviously a more typical language for vision algorithms, and of course I'm not a big JavaScript fan even if I use it for easy deployment. Stuff could be written in C and compiled to JavaScript of course using Emscripten even if the target environment (at first) was a web browser to make the project approachable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
A quick search on software related to simulation shows about 400 packages, so there is a lot to learn about or from or use:
http://sourceforge.net/directo...
BTW, I just searched on "automated tire manufacturing" and got this as the first result (might be more, Siemens is next in the list):
http://www.cimcorp.com/Dream_F...
"Total material flow control with comprehensive tire data tracking. With our Dream Factory solution, we offer comprehensive automation technology for tire manufacturers, providing total control of the material flow and precise, real-time data for production and inventory management. By automating material handling throughout the factory, Cimcorp's systems optimize throughput, minimize buffer stocks and make dynamic use of available space. Computer control of all automation units means that individual tires can be tracked through the whole process. With Dream factory, we can ensure that you achieve the maximum possible throughput of high-qualilty tires. Cimcorp has supplied a significant number of greenfield and brownfield installations for tire manufacturers worldwide. Although a greenfield site offers the ideal platform for Dream Factory, the fact that this system is created from independent modules means that partial automation of existing facilities is also simple to implement. We have solutions for raw material and component processing, green tire processing, curing, testing, palletizing, warehousing and shipping."
One page there:
http://www.cimcorp.com/Space-e...
"As part of our Dream Factory solution, we have developed several fully automated systems for green tire processing: robots for unloading of the tire-building machines, transfer robots and intelligent AGVs for transportation of tires from the building machines to the spraying area, and gantry robots for green tire buffer storage. Our solutions also take care of the weighing and spraying processes, as well as related inspection functions."
And elsewhere on that site: "Cimcorp's material handling solution begins in the raw material and component processing area, where our WCS control system with gantry robots, ASRS or intelligent AGVs can take care of the handling requirements."
And for a sense of the scope of the industry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
"Pneumatic tires are manufactured according to relatively standardized processes and machinery, in around 455 tire factories in the world. With over 1 billion tires manufactured worldwide annually, the tire industry is the major consumer of natural rubber."
However, twenty years ago, most software was produced in proprietary "factories" and we have seen a big shift. Why not tires? (Incidentally, for any jobs lost, I'd advocate for a basic income as a political shift, so I do not have a big issue with automating jobs, even if automation does shift the balance of power in a society.)
So, were we to move forward on this, we end up in the same situation as Linux was in the mid-1990s. There are already companies selling proprietary solutions in this area. So its a bit of an uphill climb there to really get adoption and broad support. And whatever solutions we developed would likely be first resisted by these players, until eventually they might incorporate them in their own ways into their own facilities. And systems like vision recognition software for, say, inspecting something being formed on a rotating drum might then get reused in a variety of applications.
However, obviously a quicker way to get in on the tire action would probably be to just work fro someplace like Cimcorp. They seem to be based in Finland? Or perhaps Siemens or a similar company. But, as in the 1990s, likely then almost everything you are doing is proprietary and you have likely more limits on creative freedom. Still, patents make information public (in theory) and anything an engineer invents or learns in one setting can, in theory, be applied in other places (within the bounds of law). And many open source projects fail despite creative hardworking people because different creative visions end up not meshing well -- or, more often, the realities of needing to earn an income within the current economic system intrude.
I'm currently working on another software project (implementing a software system related to my wife's free book Working with Stories), so alas, I don't have much cycles to put into this at the moment. And in a few months, I'm probably going to get a full time job doing unrelated stuff for pay again, and with a family that would preclude taking on too much on the side. But this issue of simulation remains of interest to me, an interest going back decades:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/...
http://www.pdfernhout.net/prin...
Ideas from 2002 from a project I started back then but which falters after I had a kid. The links from back then to software probably have mostly rotted:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/pro...
http://lists.nongnu.org/archiv...
http://lists.nongnu.org/archiv...
For me, and for the short term, I know raising capital to build an actual plant or even just a lab filled with a couple robots and tire-making paraphernalia would be very hard. It would be even harder to make the venture work given today's exchange economy.
But, taking a step back, and looking this as a simulation project, making simulation tools, or at least learning to use simulation tools, the whole thing is at least approachable. And then tire manufacturing would be a test case driving the improvement of the simulation tools.
One might think that maybe a company like Goodyear might somehow fund such work to have its name benefit from advertising? Or if that was too controversial though, one might think a car company (GM? Or maybe Tesla?) could help support such work?
Income in today's exchange economy for a typical "Creative" profession like engineering is in many ways not about "rewarding" a person so much as it is about "enabling" that person to spend time thinking about a problem. Fellowships in academia can serve much the same purpose (even if they may have a reward aspect based on, in theory, selection for merit based on past performance or promise from lots of applicants). Related:
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
In the case of your interest in electrical engineering, the question then is what kind of simulations would you need to work on this in a fun way? What kind do you use now to design and (virtually) test circuits?
Granted, simulations are not the same as reality. And realistically, this all may never happen, at least not involving you or me, for all sorts of reasons. Still, I hope I've presented at least a plausible case that a lot of people might be willing to work on such things without "reward" in an economic sense -- as long as we distinguish getting enough income to have a US middle class life while working on fun engineering projects from "reward". In a "Star Trek" society that would be the case, with essentially a basic income for everyone ("replicator rations" on Star Trek Voyager?). In the USA and some other countries right now, it is also the case for people over 65 on Social Security or who are retired on a pension or, to some extent, for people in school (like Linus Torvalds when he wrote Linux). Although such people tend to have either little energy (retired) or little experience (school). Still, in that sense, anyone over the age of 65 in the USA is already living in the beginnings of a Star Trek economy and a basic income, even if they do so using the Amazon "matter replicator" with two-day delays. :-) It is, of course, also true for millionaires -- of which there are several million such families in the USA. It would only take maybe a dozen people moving beyond the exchange-focused ideology behind such successes to have enough talent as a group to make amazing free simulations.
Bill Gates was born into a millionaire family, but instead he chose to go the proprietary/exchange route rather than use his inheritance write free software to help free other people. he even lectured people on why software could not be free based on the (false) implication he needed to earn money to write it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
"In the letter, Gates expressed frustration with most computer hobbyists who were using his company's Altair BASIC software without having paid for it. He asserted that such widespread unauthorized copying in effect discourages developers from investing time and money in creating high-quality software."
The world might be a very different place today if Bill Gates had used that inherited money and the computer knowledge gained from dumpster diving differently.
"How to be as rich as Bill Gates"
http://philip.greenspun.com/bg...
"William Henry Gates III made his best decision on October 28, 1955, the night he was born. He chose J.W. Maxwell as his great-grandfather. Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III. In some of the later lessons, you will be encouraged to take entrepreneurial risks. You may find it comforting to remember that at any time you can fall back on a trust fund worth many millions of 1998 dollars. "
And Paul Allen remembers the early years:
http://patch.com/california/lo...
"That phase of Allen's life involved taking the bus-sports coat, tie, leather briefcase and all -- down to the offices of local computer gurus. "I would boost Bill into dumpsters and we'd get these coffee-stained texts (of computer code)" from behind the offices, grinned Allen.""
Thankfully, there have been many people like Linus Torvalds, Brewster Kahle, Richard Stallman, and Michael S. Hart who made a different choice, and our world is that much richer for it. So someday, we may have free tires to go with out free electric cars. :-) Comments by me on "free" electric cars:
"Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user"
https://groups.google.com/foru...
"Real world attempts towards free-to-the-user electric cars"
https://groups.google.com/foru...
One import thing to remember about a post-scarcity society is that, because technology is an amplifier, it only (in theory) takes a very few dedicated people to produce a huge output of material goods if the factories are highly automated. Just like it only takes a (relatively) few people working on the Linux Kernel to make software that powers literally billions of machines at this point (from smartphones to Google's servers to embedded computers in automobiles).
"Will your next car run Linux? Cars go open-source with Automotive Grade Linux"
http://www.techradar.com/us/ne...
Anyway, the potential is there, even if it might take another couple decades to realize it (including probably a vast social upheaval in assumptions, including from the issue in the original article as most workers lose their job to AI and robotics and other automation and better design and cheap energy and so on). Anyone writing or even using free software (including anyone using Google) is in some sense part of that movement, as is anyone freely sharing knowledge through the internet in a variety of social media platforms -- including Slashdot.
Anyway, back to work on finishing software I've been working on for months for my wife's project and for which we may well never see a dime in *direct* return... But it is something we hope will make the world a better place, like our PlantStudio and other free software (hopefully) did... And so the *indirect* benefits can be enormous.