Autodesk Labs and NASA Technology Readiness Levels

LabsVSbeta

Have you ever noticed that projects on Autodesk Labs are called technology previews instead of alphas or betas? There’s a reason for that. When someone is evaluating an alpha, their assumption is that the next step is beta. When someone is evaluating a beta, their expectation is that the next step is a production release. With Autodesk Labs, that is not the case. The technologies being evaluated are so early in their development that the real possibility exists that the technology will not take the next step. In fact, this happens 38% of the time. Whether a technology graduates to the next steps or takes an early retirement depends heavily on the feedback we get during the preview. Your informed opinion counts!

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) works with a lot of external vendors to obtain technology. As such, NASA has defined some technical readiness levels that I have reproduced below.

  • TRL 1

    Basic principles observed and reported: Transition…

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