With this week's short jaunt from its headquarters in San Rafael to the TED conference in Long Beach, Autodesk is unveiling its leap into nanodesign, according to the New York Times.
That is, the company founded in Mill Valley in 1982 is “Project Cyborg,” taking "the first public step toward translating its computer design approach, which has since spilled over from Hollywood to the Maker movement, into the emerging nanoscale world of synthetic biology and materials," the Times reported.
Autodesk officials have not yet said when the company will commercialize the technology, but it envisions that scientists, engineers and even students and “citizen scientists” will soon be able to use the system on individual projects.
"If Autodesk is right, it will be a tremendous vindication for K. Eric Drexler, an M.I.T.-trained engineer who in the 1970s began forecasting the emergence of a world engineered by nanoscale machines," according to the Times.
