"Claytronics" is an emerging field of engineering concerning reconfigurable nanoscale robots ('claytronic atoms', or catoms) designed to form much larger scale machines or mechanisms. Also known as "programmable matter", the catoms will be sub-millimeter computers that will eventually have the ability to move around, communicate with other computers, change color, 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.
Well, maybe the holodeck is still a stretch, but it's getting much closer to reality. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created programmable matter that can take any form, including that of a human being. Known technically as dynamic physical renderings, these 3D holograms are composed of nano-sized reconfigurable claytronic atoms or catoms. Billions of catoms get conducted into a symphony of rhythmic motion, say that of a smile, by numbingly complex software.
The catoms can be aligned to create any shape imaginable, in theory. In reality, the technology remains at a point where a smile is still a laughable proposition (my apologies to Phill Robb). Researchers are still hoping to create the first real life catoms but they have achieved some success in getting catom-like objects to 'wiggle' in a laboratory setting.
What the catoms will really do someday:
The two leaders of this project, Todd Mowry and Seth Goldstein (associate professors of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University) laid out their vision with terminology that will strike a cord with frequent HPL readers - a 'telepresence'. They describe a telepresence as a 3D duplicated version of a person that would have the ability to replace traditional conferencing by placing all meeting participants in the same virtual environment.
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