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Abstract:
Today, computing engages a user’s senses of sight and hearing through video and audio devices whose effects the user must integrate in his or her mind. Suppose that electronic media could offer users an active form of original information that would fully integrate sight and sound and add the sense of touch for the user experience.
Suppose that the person using information could interact physically with it. This is the concept of claytronics, which is also known as programmable matter. Through this medium, users would engage with information in realistic, 3-dimensional forms represented in the immediacy of the user’s personal space Claytronics technology combines nano-robotics and large-scale computing to create synthetic reality, a revolutionary 3-dimensional display of information. The vision behind this research is to provide users with tangible forms of electronic information that express the appearance in actions of original sources. The clay would be made out of millions of tiny microprocessors called catoms (for “claytronic atoms “), each less than a millimeter wide. The catoms would bond electro-statically and be molded into different shapes when instructed by software.
Introduction:
Claytronics is nothing but making a machine intelligent. The idea is simple: make basic computers housed in tiny spheres that can connect to each other and rearrange themselves, which is similar to Modular- Robotics. Modular self-reconfiguring robotic systems or self-reconfigurable modular robots are autonomous kinematic machines with variable morphology which helps them to change their own shape deliberately by rearranging the connectivity of their parts.
Catoms:
With claytronics, millions of tiny individual devices -- "claytronic atoms" or "catoms" -- would assemble into macro-scale objects, connecting and disconnecting as they move. Each catom is less than a millimetre in diameter.
With billions you could make almost any object you wanted. Catoms are described as being similar in nature to a nano-machine, but with greater power and complexity. While microscopic individually, they bond and work together on a larger scale. Catoms can change their density, energy levels, state of being, and other characteristics using thought alone. These catoms are designed to form much larger scale machines or mechanisms. Also known as "programmable matter", the catoms will be sub-millimetre computers that will eventually have the ability to move around, communicate with each others, change colour, and electrostatically connect to other catoms to form different shapes. The forms made up of catoms could morph into nearly any object, even replicas of human beings for virtual meetings.
Programmable matter:
Any physical substance whose properties (or apparent properties) can be adjusted precisely and repeatedly through electrical or optical stimulation may be referred to as programmable matter. Programmable matter is an ensemble of material that contains sufficient local computation, actuation, storage, energy, sensing and communication, which can be programmed to form different dynamic shapes and configurations. Catoms will be so small that electric forces will be more important than gravity so they’re using helium filled cubes to test how catoms will work when gravity is no longer the dominate force. Programmers have to create a system where catoms can communicate wirelessly over relatively long ranges and with little power. In a single cubic meter, there could be a billion catoms.
That means a billion computers trying to talk to each other and move themselves to form a shape. It’s a daunting task but it’s helped by a great concept known as “fungibility” anything which is fungible, not only is twice as many twice as useful, its half as many is half as useful. Right now, computers are not fungible. With programmable matter, they would be. That same cubic meter of a billion catoms is essentially a network of a billion computers. That’s a lot of computational power – more than enough to organize it into different shapes. And if the computer was separated into sections, the overall computing power would still be the same. Programmable matter and fungible computers will allow you to “pour out” as much computer as you need to solve a problem. The amount of computational strength you need would be matched by a physical quantity in the real world.