21-02-2012, 11:33 AM
CLAYTRONICS
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Introduction
We still tell our children “you can be anything when you grow up.” It’s time to start telling them “you’re going to be able to make anything…right now.” How can a material be intelligent by being made up of particle-sized machines? The idea is simple: make basic computers housed in tiny spheres that can connect to each other and rearrange themselves. Each particle, called a Claytronics atom or Catom, is less than a millimeter in diameter. With billions you could make almost any object you wanted.
2. CLAYTRONICS/DPR PROJECT
The DPR project was begun at Carnegie Mellon University, spearheaded by Seth Goldstein, an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department. The project is the brainchild of Goldstein and Todd Mowry, Director of Intel Research Pittsburgh, who first discussed the idea at a conference in 2002. Mowry wanted to improve on two-dimensional videoconferencing, and Goldstein was interested in nanotechnology.
HARDWARE:
At the current stage of design, claytronics hardware operates from macroscale designs with devices that are much larger than the tiny modular robots that set the goals of this engineering research. Such devices are designed to test concepts for sub-millimetre scale modules and to elucidate crucial effects of the physical and electrical forces that affect nanoscale robots.
