Ok so call me sceptical, but methinks someone broke the knob on the
hype engine. I'm giving it to you straight: it's years and years away
this nano clay that they just revealed! Actually, I don't think it
can ever be created as conceptualized here because there's no latching
mechanism, and electromagnets can't hold up that much weight without
gobs and gobs of power. Or maybe I'm really, really missing
something? Yall help me out here!
I really like the cool buzz
name "Claytronics," though!
Here's some emails between Benjamin D. Rister of CMU and myself...
======= Benjamin D. Rister's First Message... =======
Hi Jim,
Your note (http://www.robots.net/ar
ticle/1530.html) showed up
on my
Google alert today, and I thought that as one of the people who
started the project in the first place a quick note might help.
The
article you linked, in typical science reporting fashion, isn't
either thorough or particularly accurate. Yes, it's certainly
years
and years away, but that's one thing the article did get
right--they
do have a quote from Jason in there on that.
I think your confusion probably comes from the fact that we're
really
doing something very different from the status quo, and a lot of
the
things you are skeptical about are things that we've made very
conscious design choices about in order to achieve scalability,
manufacturability, and in some cases just working in the first
place. For instance, if you look at even the state of the art in
research regarding latching mechanisms for modular robotics, it's
glacially slow, and is usually cheated anyway (if you watch
videos,
there's usually cuts in there where somebody either manually
connects
something by hand or skips over the 5 minute latching process).
These things need to move somewhat faster than that if they're
going
to animate a person. =) Also, as another example,
electromagnetics
are just a stopgap for these early prototypes--the technology
scales
with the catoms. The next step as we scale down is probably
electrostatics, and we'll go from there.
Also, as a factual FYI, each of these things does have CPU
resources
and communication capability, even on the prototypes.
Communication
is the cornerstone of what's going to make Claytronics work! The
hardware just gets easier as the years go by, but the truly
difficult
question is the control and collaboration between the catoms.
Anyway, just doing my part here to help the PR for the project.
=)
It's a way out, but every indication so far is positive, and the
world-changing aspects of it have all of us very excited. We're
just
a couple of years old now, and are just starting to start the
publication machine going, so keep an eye on the robotics
conferences
for all of the gruesome details. I think we have a power routing
paper in the upcoming IROS...
Cheers,
br
--
Benjamin D. Rister
Computer Science Department
Carnegie Mellon University
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bdr/
======= The Swirling Brain writes... =======
Thanks for the great information and the followup. I really do
appreciate you emailing me about this. May I post your email below
under the article so that all may get to read and benefit from this
additional report?
Jim Brown
======= Benjamin D. Rister writes... =======
Sure, no problem, and of course I'm happy to answer any questions if
they arise. We're all very excited about Claytronics here, and it's
nice that word is starting to get outside of the academic circles
about it, even if it does get diluted through various reporters.
Best,
br
--
Benjamin D. Rister
Computer Science Department
Carnegie Mellon University
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bdr/
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