Forget smart cars, smart appliances and smartphones. MIT
researchers are taking intelligent inanimate objects to a more
granular level: smart sand. The effect they're aiming for, as
described on MIT's news site, is this: You would bury an object
in smart sand. Seconds later, you'd be able to pull from that
sand a full-sized sand replica of the object. Smart sand isn't,
however, at sand scale yet. So far the researches have conducted
experiments on dice-sized cubes in a two-dimensional grid. The
cubes are configured with special magnets that allow each one to
communicate with and attach to its neighboring cubes. When
there's an object inserted into a grid of cubes, those that
touch it notice they're no longer touching another cube. They
inform the others that they are one of the cubes outlining the
object — together defining exactly how the object is shaped.
With the perimeter of the original object thus defined, other
cubes have the information they need to attach themselves in the
same shape. All cubes not p