Researchers at Intel and Carnegie Mellon University are working on a revolutionary project to make distributed computing possible by using very small scale robots, where these will also be able to regroup themselves into any required shape of an object, that we commonly use in our daily lives. The researchers believe that there seems to be no theoretical obstacles and they have made a lot of progress since they started the research two years ago. The goal is basically to create programmable matter utilizing electromagnetic forces by applying the appropriate software.

The tiny robots, which scientists call “catoms”, are able to individually store and process data at the same time sharing this with the other catoms to create a functioning system. Enabling such a complicated system also requires creating a different type of programing language. Researchers indicate that there is still at least several years ahead of us, before a working system is a reality. Once or if successful, the applications of such a concept could be limitless and mean revolution in our daily lives. It can be used for limitless number of things, from creating shape shifting robots to objects or real life avatars. For the original story, visit here.

Reference: www.computerworld.com

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