Imagine being a designer or any discipline: fashion, architecture, automobiles, or technology and having tools that would allow you to physically shape your project in real life before even producing a design draft? The technology would allow you to manipulating consumer products or designs in real-time with your fingers in a 3D representation of your idea. The concept can be thought of as “the ultimate form of digital printing”.
First demoed at last year’s Intel Developer Forum (IDF), Programmable Matter, as it’s termed now, is looking more realistic in the next few years. The idea revolves around tiny glass spheres with processing power and photovoltaic for generating electricity to run the tiny circuitry. These particles called catoms would move relative to one another via electrostatic. Here’s a visual:
Programmable Matter along with Intel’s Dynamic Physical Rendering (DPR) are some of the sweetest technology I’ve seen in years.