The future of interactive tools for professionals
Programmable Matter is a two-decade ambitious project aimed at bridging the gap between the virtual and the tangible world
Computer-aided design
The idea is to have a computer-aided design (CAD) tool – computer software that supports the design process – connected with a bunch of Catoms. Once a part is digitally designed, the information is transferred to the Catoms, which then take the shape of the part, turning into a physical prototype made of tiny bots.
🗨️ “The designer can then directly interact with the matter, touching the Catoms he wants to move, like electronic clay” — Pr. Julien Bourgeois, FEMTO-ST Institute
The CAD version of the vehicle is synchronized in real-time with the physical model made of thousands of Catoms to allow smooth simulations and exports.
Flexible control panel
Graphical interfaces are more and more present in our day to day life, but also at work with sound engineers for instance. A digital screen displays sets of graphical controls inside a size constrained area. Take a smartphone, you use the same space to display various controls but cannot have them all on at the same time.
🗨️ “Interface control objects in the tangible condition were easiest to acquire and, once acquired, were easier to manipulate” — Tuddenham, Kirk, & Izadi
On the other hand, tangible panels allow accurate and quick interactions. They also enable an engineer, a camera operator or a pilot to operate without even watching their own hands. But unlike graphical interfaces, all controls are spread across the same cluttered workspace requiring extensive training to handle them.
A flexible control panel made of programmable matter is a 100% tangible interface, with the flexibility of a graphical display.
Multi-purpose objects
In space, having multi-functionnal objects could be useful to save space and weight. Same tools cannot be used both inside and outside a spaceship, adaptable tools would therefore be beneficial.Any payload content sent to space is carefully organized to be as much light- and space-saving as possible.
Items made of programmable matter are multi-purpose by essence as they can reshape according to the use case at hand.
The same tool is able to adapt itself to indoor and outer space use, for instance with and without wearing a space suit.
Historical roadmap
Creation of programmable matter is an epic journey spanning over fifteen years and three continents.
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2006
Mass and magnetism investigations
"Big surfaces to manipulate tiny forces. The Giant Helium Catom provides researchers a macroscale instrument to investigate physical forces that affect microscale devices."
Summing up
The GHC was designed to approximate the relationship between a near-zero-mass (or weightless) particle and the force of electro-magnetic fields spread across the surface of such particles. Such studies are needed to understand the influence of surface tensions on the engineering of interfaces for nanoscale devices.
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2007
Creating motion without moving parts
"Employing magnetic force to generate motion, its operations as a research instrument build a bridge to a scale of engineering that will make it possible to manufacture self-actuating nano-system devices."
Summing up
The self-actuating, cylinder-shaped planar Catom tests concepts of motion, power distribution, data transfer and communication that will be eventually incorporated into ensembles of nano-scale robots. It provides a testbed for the architecture of micro-electro-mechanical systems for self-actuation in modular robotic devices.
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2011
Scaling down to millimeter
"As a simplified approach cylindrical catoms were first built instead of spheres. We name here these cylindrical catoms the 2D Catoms."
Summing up
Realizing high-resolution programmable matter requires millimeter-scale catoms. Within the Claytronics project led by Carnegie Mellon University, researchers have developed and demonstrated millimeter-scale cylindrical catoms that are electrostatically actuated and self contained.
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2021
Moving to 3D Claytronic atom
"Cubes are difficult to move in 3D, cylinder cannot move in 3D and a real sphere is difficult to build at a mm-scale from a 2D sheet of material"
Summing up
Engineering a quasi-spherical module, called a 3D Catom in the context of the Claytronics project, able to fit all the requirements of programmable matter. It is logically placed in a regular Face-Centered Cubic lattice. Rotations allow these 3D Catoms to move from one grid position to another.
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2025
Introducing resilience with deformability
"Moving a module in a modular robot is a very complex and error-prone process."
Summing up
Creating a new kind of deformable module allowing a movement which preserves the connection between the moving and the fixed modules using electrostatic actuator.
1 Actuate & scale
Manage high-voltage and electrostatic actuators at small scales to achieve movement between modules.
2 Power & communicate
Include complex chip and circuitry to drive data, power and actuators to sustain a distributed objects network.
3 Integrate
Put together inside a custom shell each previously designed components reducing the total mass of a module.
4 Self-reconfigure
Simulate and resolve clustering parallelization, reconfiguration optimization, mechanical resilience and error corrections.