Today on In Case You Missed It: David Hasselhoff stars in a short film about an AI that takes over people's lives and decides what they should do and say. The kicker is that all of The Hoff's lines were written by -- you guessed it -- an AI. As M. Night Shyamalan would say, what a twist! We also take a look at MIT's newest homebuilding tool, a gigantic tank-treaded 3D printer called the Digital Construction Platform. It's armed with all sorts of appendages, including extruders, welding guns and scoop buckets.

The future of construction just got a little bit more real. Researchers at MIT have created a mobile robot that can 3-D-print an entire building in a matter of hours -- a technology that could be used in disaster zones, on inhospitable planets or even in our proverbial backyards. Though the platform described in the journal Science Robotics is still in early stages, it could offer a revolutionary tool for the construction industry and inspire more architects to rethink the relationship of buildings to people and the environment. Current construction practices typically involve bricklaying, wood framing and concrete casting – technologies that have been around for decades in some cases, and centuries in others. Homes and office buildings are often built in the same boxy, cookie-cutter-like templates, even though the environment from one area to another may change dramatically.

The average single-family home takes roughly seven months to complete, but MIT researchers have developed a cutting-edge system that does the job in less than a day. The team has designed an autonomous robot capable of 3D printing the basic structure of an entire building. Equipped with a precision-motion robotic arm and powered by solar panels, the machine sprays an insulation foam mold on the ground and then fills it with concrete – it completed the walls of a 50-foot-diameter, 12-foot-high dome in 14 hours. MIT has designed an autonomous robot capable of 3D printing the basic structure of an entire building. MIT's system is a massive robotic arm attached to a track vehicle.

Your next house could be built by a robot. Following the recent success of San Francisco-based startup Apis Cor, a team of MIT researchers have created a mobile autonomous 3D printer of their own. And to prove that the prototype works, the team had it build a 12-foot tall, 50-foot-wide igloo out of quick-setting foam -- the largest such structure made by a robot to date. The team recently published their work in the journal Science Robotics, arguing that automation should help lower construction costs and expedite building times. Their creation, dubbed the Digital Construction Platform, consists of a large hydraulic arm mounted on caterpillar treads. At the tip of its arm, the team installed a one-fingered gripping attachment though it can be swapped out for a number of different tools including foam and thermoplastic extruders, a welder, a water hose or a bucket.

Need a building customized for a particular site quickly? Researchers say a 3D printer may be the answer -- and could reduce the cost to boot. Researcher Steven Keating and colleagues write in this week's Science Robotics a 3D system could reduce construction costs while speeding the process, incorporating different materials and densities as the process moves forward to produce optimal combinations of strength and other properties. "Contemporary construction techniques are slow, labor-intensive, dangerous, expensive, and constrained to primarily rectilinear forms, often resulting in homogenous structures built using materials sourced from centralized factories," the researchers said. Instead, they propose a digital construction platform, an "automated construction system capable of customized on-site fabrication of architectural-scale structures using real-time environmental data for process control."

The 3D printing industry in South Korea has just received a significant boost, with the announcement of a new state initiative. The government has released details of an evaluation and compensation system soon to be established in the medical device industry, which will provide particular incentives for the use of newer, innovative technologies. Medical devices that make use of 3D printing, as well as artificial intelligence and robotics, will be evaluated more effectively and partially funded by the new government scheme. In 2016 South Korea's 3D printing industry was worth around $75 million, under 2 percent of the global 3D printing market, and increasing its 3D printing footprint has been a priority of the South Korean government for a number of years now. We reported before on efforts to improve use and development of 3D printing in the country, with initial discussions around the easing of regulations and various tax breaks starting last year.

Manufacturing companies have traditionally been slow to react to the advent of digital technologies like intelligent robots, drones, sensor technology,artificial intelligence, nanotechnology & 3d Printing. Industry 4.0 has changed manufacturing. At a high-level, Industry 4.0 represents the vision of the interconnected factory where all equipment is online, and in some way, is also intelligent and capable of making its own decisions. The explosion in connected devices and platforms, abundance of data from field devices and rapidly changing technology landscape has made it imperative for companies to quickly adapt their products and services and move from physical world to a digital world. Today, Manufacturing is transforming from mass production to the one characterized by mass customization.

To create their contraption, the team turned to 3D printing. They used a custom 3D printer called MultiFab to make the T-shaped gizmo, which has a small circular part that changes color when the T's crossbars stretch. MultiFab did everything, from printing the device's thin, sensor-laden plastic skin to depositing and curing the liquid that serves as its semiconductor. "In nature, networks of sensors and interconnects are called sensorimotor pathways. We were trying to see whether we could replicate sensorimotor pathways inside a 3-D-printed object. So we considered the simplest organism we could find."

Trees and other plants, from towering redwoods to diminutive daisies, are nature's hydraulic pumps. They are constantly pulling water up from their roots to the topmost leaves, and pumping sugars produced by their leaves back down to the roots. This constant stream of nutrients is shuttled through a system of tissues called xylem and phloem, which are packed together in woody, parallel conduits. Now engineers at MIT and their collaborators have designed a microfluidic device they call a "tree-on-a-chip," which mimics the pumping mechanism of trees and plants. Like its natural counterparts, the chip operates passively, requiring no moving parts or external pumps.

Over 150 technologies were considered as part of the PWC Essential Eight Global Megatrends review where technologies with the greatest expected impact over the next 5 to 7 years are identified. Only eight technologies made the list and our review of the technology and example use cases follows. Using computer systems and technology to perform activities that would otherwise require human intelligence. While many people immediately think of futuristic movies with lifelike robots that can interact on a human level, this technology is available today and being used in ways that allow humans to focus on more challenging problems. Forms of artificial intelligence have been around since the 1950's and became popular with large tech companies during the 90's and 00's.