Carnegie Mellon University and Intel’s lab in Pittsburgh have been teaming up over the last few years to work on Programmable Matter (known more commonly as Claytronics). The idea here is to create a technology that can shift it’s physical form and density to produce a mass of very small computers that can form a variety of shapes as directed by the user. The example I keep running across as I look further into these is a smartphone that goes down to it’s smallest possible size for storage (either in the ear or a pocket). Then once the user wants to make a call it reforms itself to become a more common sized and usable phone. Then if the user wants to use the internet or e-mail the device could reform once again to become a netbook. Another idea that I saw in a video that is less technologically complicated is a recliner that becomes a chaise lounge when desired.

Right now development looks to be at a stage where the team has cylinders around 2 inches in diameter and looks like 3 – 4 inches in length. They are controlled through a wire not wirelessly as would be desired, but the hardware they do have is still an interesting display of concept. These devices are patched full of magnets needed to keep the units together and the associated circuitry to take commands from the team’s input device. The team has several papers and video’s on there website that shows rather impressive development in the hardware aspect of this technology.

Being the software geek that I am the part of this that I see as really cool is that the software guys on the team have developed proprietary languages to control the movement of the catoms (claytronic atoms, witty ha?). The team has displayed the ability to make drastic transformations in shape with jut a few pages of code. Meld is the language that they have created to control the large scale movement of a network of catoms. According to the team page a user can do in one page of Meld what would take 20 to 30 pages of C++ by allowing the user to concentrate on the global level change in the network and not have to hand code the commands for each individual catom. LDP (Locally Distributed Predicates) is another language that they developed this one aimed more at pattern matching and other more specific things giving the programmer more control over what the catom’s do or look like once they reach the shape that they have been instructed. The couch example probably could be done solely with Meld while the smartphone one would certainly require LDP to make sure that the brains of the device stayed together.

This really has some neat possibilities. I highly recommend the videos on the Carnegie Mellon website (especially the one on their homepage) because they show some very awesome possibilities. The development timeline the I keep finding is to have a marketable product in three to five years, I think that’s a rather optimistic timeline but I will be watching the developments for sure.

Links:

Carnegie Mellon’s website dedicated to Claytronics

Very cool Claytronics concept video

Carnegie Mellon, catom, claytronics, Intel, programmable matter