3D-printed bridge in red light district opened by Dutch Queen with robot arm


It's a turn of events that seems like it was spat out by a neural network trained on Elon Musk tweets and Black Mirror episodes, but on Thursday, Queen Máxima of the Netherlands ceremonially opened a 12m (40ft) long steel bridge in Amsterdam's red light district, the first in the world to be 3D printed.

Technically, the Queen didn't do the job herself, instead pressing a green button that prompted a robot arm to cut a ribbon for the bridge's opening. While that might seem a bit odd in a vacuum, given the world-first of the bridge and the robotic wire-and-arc additive manufacturing (WAAM, because everybody loves a clumsy acronym), it was more symbolic than anything else.