Smart Matter Research
in the
Embedded Computation Area

Help make Smart Matter happen!

Overview

Imagine how different the world would be if miniaturized sensors, actuators, and computers could be embedded within materials, coated on surfaces, and spread throughout the environment, essentially making matter programmable. Fundamental properties such as shape, stiffness, color, reflectivity of light and sound, and even load-bearing strength could be dynamically adjusted on demand. Clouds of smart dust could be programmed to sense ground traffic patterns or hazardous atmospheric conditions, or even to display information. We believe that a set of emerging technologies, such as MEMS, which integrate sensing, actuation, and computation, will revolutionize the way that people build products in the 21^st century by coupling computation to the physical world on a scale that has never before been possible.

The Smart Matter Project is pursuing a novel synthesis of technologies that seeks to merge information systems with diverse technologies from the fields of MEMS, active structural control, smart materials, and distributed communication to create intelligent surfaces, particles, and materials that can sense, reason about, and interact with their environment.

Work on Smart Matter is inherently multi-disciplinary, and this is reflected in the way that PARC has approached this work. An interdisciplinary team of scientists from multiple PARC laboratories is working closely together to pursue a broad theme of research that includes the development of novel types of sensors, actuators, and batch-fabrication processes, as well as the development of paradigms for combining these components to form systems.

ECA's Research

Research in the Embedded Computation Area (ECA) focuses on addressing the system-level issues of Smart Matter, including research on distributed control strategies, system architectures, models of highly embedded computation, languages for control of massively parallel distributed systems, novel ways to use and/or combine devices and fabrication processes, and the development of hardware and software prototypes that enable exploration of these issues.

Some of PARC's research accomplishments involving ECA researchers include:

• A Smart Matter-driven paper mover that uses distributed sensing and arrays of airjets to move and precisely position paper.
• Actively stabilized beams and columns that are capable of adjusting their load-bearing strength and stiffness
• A programming model for embedded systems called Aspect Oriented Programming
• mEMS: Novel fabrication techniques that merge Printed-Circuit board fabrication technology with MEMS technology to create a larger-scale of batch-fabrication technology that we call mEMS (milli-scale Electro-Mechanical Systems). A prototype array of several hundred fluid valves has been constructed using the process.
• The ISAT Study on Distributed Information Systems for MEMS. This study examines the long-term potential of MEMS/Smart Matter technology to couple computation to the physical world, and documents some of the opportunities for information systems research.
• Simulation environments, distributed control strategies, mathematical theorems to support controller development, tools for analyzing and predicting the operating range of actively controlled dynamical systems, interconnection and programming strategies for modular micro-robotics, theories about control of quantum-scale smart matter, and control toolkits.