3D printing and other fabrication technologies allow for the creation of complex objects by building up layers of material according to a 3D model. These techniques can be used to print skin cells for wound healing, organs, and basic electronics. Personal fabrication tools like 3D printers and laser cutters enable individuals to design and produce custom objects. Programmable matter research aims to create materials that can change their physical properties, such as shape, density, and chemical composition, on demand.

1. Mind Over Matter
Even before molecular
nanotechnology..

2. Printing material things
• Objects from 3D models
– Lays down layer after layer of various materials to build out a 3D
object according to a 3D model
• Skin
– Prints skin cells directly on a wound greatly reducing healing
time
• Organs
– Creating organs by laying down layers of cells and cellular matrix
• Electronics
– Printing with ink that has various electrical properties
• Printing wires, capacitors, transistors, etc. but not so small as non-
printed state of the art
• Printed displays, flexible electronics

3. Computerized sculpting of matter
• CNC has been around a long time
– Computerized fabrication at factory scale
• Personal CNC
– At smaller scale
– Feeding back to cheaper and or larger scale CNC
– Open source fabrication

4. From your computer to your door
• Many companies now exist that will create your
3D objects in a variety of materials
• Ten days from uploaded 3D files to finished
object
• Many materials
– Bronze laced steel
– Aluminate
– Glass
– Many types of acrylics
– Many plastics

5. RepRap
Low cost open source desktop 3D printer
– Can make most of itself. (Not the electronics)
• Pseudo self replicating
• Plastic “ink”
– Melted and extruded
– Next version can “print” with electrically
conductive material
• or combine with laser jet printed circuits

6. Personal Fabrication
• Print / make your own
– Bicycle
– Parts
– Electronics..
• Gershenfeld
– MIT Center for Bits and Atoms
– FAB: The coming revolution on your desktop
– Went to poor villages all over the world with cheap fab
equipment run by solar
– Fablabs
• Hacking material things like hacking software
• One off products for personal immediate use

7. FabLab
• Inner city Boston to rural India, Africa
• Components
– Computer-controlled lasercutter
– Numerically controlled milling machine
– Signcutter (masks, flex circuits, antennaes
– Micron resolution milling machine
– Box of high speed embedded processors
• http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/faq/

8. Programmable Matter
• Matter that can change its physical properties
– All the way down to apparent electron shell level and thus down
to the chemical level
• Programmable catalysts
– Optical properties
– Shape
– Density
• Computronium, sort of
– Fine grained compute nodes communicating nearest neighbor
only
• Lattice gas automata
• CAM 6 is sample architecture.
• Used in self replicating machine studies
– Drexlerian rod logic

9. Programmable Matter..
• Different scales of PM
– Small hockey puck sized self assembling robots can
model atomic sized PM to large degree
– Cellular automata research
• Many useful algorithms
• One approach to modeling parts of brain
– Programmable atoms
• Based on quantum wells holding one or more electrons
– Claytronics
• Reconfigurable interacting nanoscale robots

10. Programmable Atoms
• Hacking Matter, Wil McCarthy
– Change any chunk of smart matter drastically
• Wall => Window => Computer Screen => Hologram
generator
• Chair =>SuperComputer
• Hard to soft, paper to stone
• Flourescent to super-reflective to invisible
– Basically spun silicone in density
• But with the chemical, optical, strength properties of most
anything you desire
– An alternate to full MNT or arguably a step smaller
• So not likely in next decade or two

11. Artificial atoms
• A quatum well can be tuned as to the number of electrons
contained within it
– Outer electron shell of atoms determine many of its properties
– Hence tunable artificial atoms
• Need placement within 20 nm of quantum wells and trapped
electron for room temp “atoms”
– MNT
– Atom optics
• Beaming electrons and atoms onto surface
• Unlike MNT artificial atom material is solid state
• Electrostatic quantum wells of this type are produced in labs today
• http://www.colin.org/SmallStuff/QuantumDotsProgramMatter.html

12. Virtual Reality  Programmable
Reality
• Highly malleable reality in VW today
• Physical reality made more and more malleable to our
desires
• Utility Fog
• Wellstone
– Most every manufactured thing made of programmable
matter including large structures
• Goods printed on your printer
– Tools, clothes, electronics, widgets
• Scripted real world objects
– Changing shape and properties on demand need