Synthetic Reality

Welcome to the Synthetic Reality project at Carnegie Mellon.

The goal of the claytronics project is to understand and develop the hardware and software neccesary to create a material which can be programmed to form dynamic three dimensional shapes which can interact in the physical world and visually take on an arbitrary appearance. Claytronics refers to an ensemble of individual components, called catoms—for claytronic atoms—that can move in three dimensions (in relation to other catoms), adhere to other catoms to maintain a 3D shape, and compute state information (with possible assistance from other catoms in the ensemble). Each catom contains a CPU, an energy store, a network device, a video output device, one or more sensors, a means of locomotion, and a mechanism for adhering to other catoms.

The power and flexibility that will arise from being able to "program" the world around us should influence every aspect of the human experience. In our project we focus in on one particular aspect of the human experience, how we communicate and interact with each other. Claytronics is a technology which can serve as the means of implementing a new communication medium, which we call pario. The idea behind pario is to reproduce moving, physical 3D objects. Similar to audio and video, we are neither transporting the original phenomena nor recreating an exact replica: instead, the idea is to create a physical artifact that can do a good enough job of reproducing the shape, appearance, motion, etc., of the original object that our senses will accept it as being close enough.

One example of how claytronics might be used is presented in the concept video put together by ETC.

We are collaborating with Intel Research Pittsburgh. For more information you can see their pages about dynamic physical rendering.

Use the links to the left to see a partial list of publications, some videos and photos documenting our progress, a partial list of talks we have given, download a copy of the simulator, and, people working on the project.