Hulleye Comes By!

there’s not a whole lot of information on wikipedia about claytronics, but what from what i’ve understood and read about it, it will be one of the coolest new technologies of this century and may change the way we interact with objects. programmable matter. imagine that for a sec. that’s like being able to shapeshift. weirdly enough, intel is one of the big-wigs in this matter. i suppose where there’s programming, there’s a processor, and where theres a processor, it makes sense for intel to be there.

According to the Claytronics project’s Seth Goldstein and Todd Mowry, programmable matter is:

An ensemble of material that contains sufficient

local computation

actuation

storage

energy

sensing & communication
Which can be programmed to form interesting dynamic shapes and configurations.

Claytronics is their way of bringing this concept into reality.

With claytronics, millions of tiny individual devices — “claytronic atoms” or “catoms” — would assemble into macro-scale objects, connecting and disconnecting as they move.

here’s a fantastic video i saw the other day which though, in an extremely prototypical stage, can definitely demonstrate the potential of this technology. and here is the main page for the claytronics project which carnegie mellon is heading.