The construction of New York's Empire State Building is often seen as the figurative and literal pinnacle of construction efficiency, rising 1,250 feet and 102 stories from the ground to its rooftop spire in just over 13 months' time, at a human cost of just five lives. Indeed, most of today's construction projects would be lucky to come close to that level of speed, regardless of the building's size. While the construction industry traditionally has been slow to change the way it operates, several new technologies are poised to usher in a new era of faster and more automated construction practices. Three-dimensional (3D) printing is among the key technologies that are expected to change the way structures are built in the future, as construction engineers and contractors seek methods for completing buildings more quickly, more efficiently, and, in many cases, with a greater attention paid to sustainability. Large printers that can print construction materials such as foam or concrete into specific shapes can drastically speed up the creation of walls, decorative or ornamental pieces, and even certain structural elements.

Stunning concept images have revealed a glimpse of what homes of the future could look like, as preparations are made for the world's first freeform 3D-printed property. Experts will build a house called'Curve Appeal' whose structure will be made from 28 panels, which will be 3D-printed off-site before being slotted together on-site to create two exterior walls, a roof and interior core. These four main sections will then be hoisted into place and joined together, and will feature a complex blend of curved angles and glazed windows. Although 3D printed buildings have been made before, this futuristic home - to be constructed in Chattanooga, Tennessee, later this year - will be the first of its kind, as it will contain no regular shapes or angles. Designers are planning to build the world's first freeform 3D-printed house later this year, taking a competition winning idea from concept to reality.

India has a severe shortage of engineers in these technologies, especially when countries like the US have a talent pool of 850,000 AI engineers. Finally, India begins to take Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, 3D Printing, and IOT technologies seriously. The finance minister announced during his Budget 2018 speech emphasised the need to set up centres of excellence to enhance their impact on business and the economy. The budget has allocated Rs 3,073 crore for this purpose, which has doubled from last year. This comes at a time when China has put in $2 billion for its centre for excellence.

Niti Aayog, the main policy think tank of the government, will direct the Centre's efforts to research on new technologies such as Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and 3D printing in various areas, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday. "Global economy is transforming into a digital economy thanks to development of cutting-edge technologies in digital space – machine learning, artificial intelligence, internet of things, 3D printing and the like," he said in his budget speech. Jaitley said the NITI Aayog will initiate a national programme to direct the government's efforts in the area of artificial intelligence and that the Department of Science and Technology will launch a Cyber Physical Systems Mission to establish centres of excellence to train people in robotics, AI, digital manufacturing, big data analytics, quantum communication and Internet of Things. He also said that the government was doubling the allocation for the Digital India programme to Rs 3,073 crore for 2018-19. The budget also proposed to set up five lakh WiFi hotspots to provide broadband access to five crore rural citizens. Besides, the budget has allocated Rs 10,000 crore to create and augment telecom infrastructure for the next year.

You know that slightly niggly, slightly crazy feeling you get when you feel something or someone is watching you? I have that feeling that today as I sit writing about a tech subject that's very topical and very exciting. The eyes have it, full of soulfulness and a sense of spiky intellect. The hair is ruby-red with snowy white bands and the ears are bobbed... the likeness is fairly uncanny as I look at Sophie, a beautifully rendered 3D sculpture of my almost decade-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Her sandstone replica sits serenely, almost regally, on the corner bookshelf while the real dog lies on a cosy rug snoring soundly, oblivious to the clear advances in tech over the past few years that have made the exactness of her "clone" possible.

If you want to see the future of 3-D printing, ask Stefanie Mueller for a demo. A computer scientist at MIT, Mueller's work has involved projects like developing a laser-cutting system to make delicate, 3-D printed origami. Now, Mueller and a team at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab are introducing a new kind of 3-D printable ink that makes it possible to recolor 3-D objects after they've been printed. The method, called ColorFab, combines a 3-D printing interface and a special type of 3-D printable ink that changes colors when activated by light. Together, the system makes it possible to dynamically change and customize an object's appearance many times.

'Optical trap display' projects graphics into the air, where they are visible from all angles We still don't have flying cars, brain-computer interfaces, or an artificial intelligence (AI) you can hold a conversation with, but one classic science-fiction technology is on our doorstep: true 3D displays which are capable of projecting an image into "thin air". A new paper in the journal Nature reports a breakthrough from a group of researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah: the first creation of a "free-space volumetric display", capable of reproducing full-colour graphics floating in the air, visible from all angles. The technology, dubbed the "optical trap display", works using a technique that sounds like it was ripped from the cinema screen. "You capture a particle in an invisible, or almost invisible'tractor beam'," explains the lead researcher, Daniel Smalley, "then you drag that around to every point of an image. When it's in the right place, you shoot it with red, green and blue lasers to make it illuminate, and build up an image point by point, dragging this cellulose particle around as you go."

John Zysman (Zysman.john@gmail.com) is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, cofounder of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, and convener of the Berkeley Project Work in an Era of Intelligent Tools and Systems. Martin Kenney (mfkenney@ucdavis.edu) is Distinguished Professor of Human and Community Development at the University of California, Davis, and Senior Project Director at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy; he is also an Affiliated Faculty at Instituto di Management at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy.

Some of the biggest players in the industry have already started to embrace disruptive and cutting-edge technologies, but this year we will see smaller and medium sized manufacturers incorporating the same technologies into their processes with equally as effective results. The entire industry is on the brink of an upheaval parallel to the industrial revolutions it has experienced throughout history – those that centered around technologies like steam-powered machinery and the linear assembly machine. The pending industrial revolution will be underpinned by a range of technologies that have already begun to pervade their way across the sector, such as 3D printing and artificial intelligence, and will continue to do so in 2018. See also: Combatting the manufacturing industry's skills gap Perhaps the most important technological shift we will see across the manufacturing industry in 2018 is the increasing adoption of genuine artificial intelligence by manufacturers of varied size across the sector. There is a distinction to be made between the ostensible ai (colloquially known as'lowercase' ai) that we have seen dominating the press throughout 2017, and the genuine AI (known as'uppercase' AI) that will be rolled out across the sector this year.

Keidanren has tapped Hitachi Ltd. Chairman Hiroaki Nakanishi as its next chief, the nation's top business lobby said Tuesday. The appointment was approved earlier in the day at a meeting of the body's board of councilors. Nakanishi, 71, will be formally appointed at Keidanren's general meeting on May 31, the lobby said, replacing 74-year-old Sadayuki Sakakibara, senior adviser at Toray Industries Inc. The move marks the first time an executive from Hitachi, a major industrial machinery manufacturer, will assume Keidanren's top post. Sakakibara had said he would pick his successor from current or former vice chairs, who are from strongly performing manufacturers.