What do you think crates will look like in the future of reality?
polycounter lvl 7
Heh, just thought I'd make a bit of a light-hearted post after browsing through a lot of artwork on the forums. (This is not about what looks cool but what is probably going to be the future)
Do you guys think crates in the real future might actually look like these:
or more along the lines of these perhaps:
I'm personally going to take a random guess and say that they'll probably still be boxes in the future due to easy storing and cheap production over aesthetics. That and I kind of doubt someones going to want 5 different security touchpads and locks to go through everytime they have to open up a container. Queue the simple objects in real-life.
maaaybe slightly more greeble, please let there be more greeble.
Do you guys think crates in the real future might actually look like these:
or more along the lines of these perhaps:
I'm personally going to take a random guess and say that they'll probably still be boxes in the future due to easy storing and cheap production over aesthetics. That and I kind of doubt someones going to want 5 different security touchpads and locks to go through everytime they have to open up a container. Queue the simple objects in real-life.
maaaybe slightly more greeble, please let there be more greeble.
Replies
Plus hexes = future, just ask Sid Meier.
boxes within boxes within boxes. Maybe something will be cut out of that in the future and we'll learn to save more space
Sure... Now they just gotta build rooms in shape of hexagon as well. Cuz there's no way you can effectively pack hexes into rectangular-shape room. Same for warehouse, ship's cargo hold, truck, trains and what not...
wood is realy bad at stopping bullets and lasers.
Sleek white/black/brown plastic boxes, with bevelled edges.
far more likely is that we'll see stronger, lighter materials that obviate the need for strong backing surfaces or multiple components
Ya, drones might be the only thing to change looks up a bit because there's no standard for them yet. But, more than likely, they'll be made to fit the standard, not the other way around. It's just more cost effective that way. :poly142:
Now plane cargo is a whole different story.
it helps that some of these materials tend to be lighter than wood.
I'd also imagine that many of these crates would be built and assembled to package specific goods, and could be shaped and manufactured to fit the cargo and save space, as well as provide protective/cushioned packaging.
And then the materials are reusable, which isn't always the case with wood.
In terms of shape, let's not forget that drums and barrels are clearly not made in square form. But that's likely a manufacturing variable, since making water/air tight containers tends to be easier with you have only 3 seams to worry about and not 12, or 18. Plus liquids and gasses (or granular substances) don't need a box, so any shape will do. Easy to get the cargo in the barrel and out, and not too hard to store. They store like hexagons.
All the seams are welded, of course, to prevent the container from leaking. The reason why this is a good container design for this particular situation is that the pressure is more evenly distributed among the walls of the container, meaning that you need to use less material to get a similarly sturdy canister. Take this line of thinking to its extreme and you get an egg, which distributes pressure that's applied evenly to its walls very well.
Of course, real gas containers have more constraints, like packing efficiency, so they usually don't have spherical shapes if their sole purpose is storage. If you need to put something under a lot of pressure, though, for instance if you're manufacturing diamonds, you'll probably run into a situation where you're pressurizing stuff in a container that's as close to spherical as possible.
Gas containers are a little more optimized for packing and transport so they tend to have a capsule shape rather than a spherical shape. This provides good enough pressure distribution without drastically reducing efficiency. Of course, if you're transporting dry goods, hexagonal prisms will be more efficient, or those rhombic dodecahedral thingymajigs, and of course stuff is probably going to have a handle of some sort and a lid or spout of some sort for the foreseeable future (though a more precise form of attachment point might not be out of the question if the container is supposed to be handled only by robots.)
Fun stuff.
One of the reasons the connex metal crates pile up is that it's cheaper to get a new one than it is to re-certify one for shipping.
They do need more things to re-purpose them for but even now you can do some interesting and creative things with them.
As for futuristic crates I don't really see them changing shape. I think we'll see some interesting advances in shipping but I don't think a shape change will be one of them.
Some space that's taken up by air is more than no space that's taken up by air.
Some cool functionality here
People don't do it because it's stupidly expensive and completely unnecessary compared to a plain wood/cardboard box.
Or maybe not because that's boring compared to crazy sci-fi iCrate with zany shapes.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/05/13/183704091/what-is-it-about-bees-and-hexagons
Maybe the crate of the future won't be a stand alone container at all. Maybe it will look more like a honeycomb but because of the shared sides, it will just be temporary panels that snap into place to create chambers for whatever goes inside. Different configurations can be created and customized to better outline the cargo. So instead of something odd shaped, going into a standard sized container the container would better conform to the shape and allow other smaller objects to be packed in around it.
But it was the mountain of small stuff that needed to be packed stored and shipped effectively that made such organization a living hell. I fell in love with the stackable containers with the hinged lids that u see at pharmacies and grocery stores:
The grade of plastics for commercial/industrial use are tuff as nails so you could throw them about when hard at work without worrying about brittle breakage u get with the cheap walmart versions. You can stack front to back floor to ceiling and never have to worry about matching enuff lids to containers. Plus they come with handles built in!
Never have to worry about the bottom of a stack crushed under all the weight thus never tumbling over bringing down everything else around it. Not to mention that they r stackable because the bases are slightly smaller than the "lipped edge" lids they "fit" into.
On the other hand...
I was so fatigued and disorganized that I had to use the transparent brittle ones because being able to see the contents at all times saved me alot more time than any other headache solution. Would have been nice to have found a transparent model that was just as sturdy as the industrial grey containers.
For this reason "Cambro" containers have a virtual monopoly in the restaurant industry:
Stackable lipped lids. Storage both tough and transparent for easy content recognition...
( but really really expensive $$$ compared to the laymen who might compare the same to cheap tupperware )
As obvious a solution square/rectangular cube spaces might be to "footprint efficiency"...
( both to the warehouse floor and the packed items within )
the hexagonal "rows n columns" will not tip over as easily as the weak straight fault lines u git with cubes.
spose u could stagger cubes to get rid of those fault lines but then u run into the same problem of leftover footprint gaps. In both instances special gap sized containers could fill up the square? But then again, the end needing triangles wouldn't be worth the effort?:
In the images I could find,
the hex containers are shown stacked on the hex angled sides.
I imagine u could stack higher without worrying about tipping over by laying them flat.
Letting gravity take care of those "straight fault lines".
What would be the next step after a crate though? What would people use in 2200? Boxes sure, but what else? Big gelatinous absorbant cubes that absorb anything you put in and act as an automatic cushion? Sticky pallets that hold anything put on them with gravitational forces and can be aligned sideways or upside down without dropping their load?