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Imagine a bracelet or watch that changes into something else when you take it off. Perhaps it becomes a cell phone, or laptop computer. Although this scenario may seem like science fiction, this and much more will soon become reality with a ground-breaking new technology known as claytronics.

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and Intel Research Labs Pittsburgh are just a few years away from bringing to life a futuristic simulation system that can morph nearly any object imagined into another object with different size, shape, color and function.

The building units that make this amazing system possible include tiny micro robots called claytronic atoms, or ‘catoms’, which interact with each other. They behave like atoms in the sense that they become the basic building blocks of the objects they are programmed to form. Each component becomes part of a computerized network of objects and identifies itself based on function; for example, a catom might see itself as part of a human body. On command, millions, or even billions of catoms working together would fall in place to create, in this case, a replicate of a live person.

With claytronics, matter can be transformed into any shape for any purpose. Furniture could change shape; blank walls could grow doors or windows. Catoms could form into people that we would find difficult to discern from the real person. They would appear as an actual physical being, not a hologram.

On command, walls in our homes could light up with a radiant glow; TVs would look less like moving pictures and more like 3-D windows; and as wild as this may sound, we could actually move doors and windows to different walls. There is almost no end to the magic that this technology could create.

Shape-Shifting Robots: Forget Nanotech; Think Claytronics

Source: ieet.org