Prof. Neil Gershenfeld
Director
http://cba.mit.edu/~neilg
NSF CCR-0122419
Bits and Atoms:
Grand Challenges
it from bit: how can functional description be embodied in physical form?
computational assembly
RF biology
programmable design
personal fabrication
bit from it: how can functional description be abstracted from physical form?
quantum-mechanical engineering
analog logic
silicon biology
statistical-mechanical engineering
Thresholds
1948: Communications
(Shannon)
errors
1963: Computation
(Winograd, von Neumann)
~2003: Fabrication
(Jacobson, Knight, …)
noise
RF Biology
Remote Electronic Control of DNA Hybridization
Through Inductive Coupling to an Attached Metal
Nanocrystal Antenna, K. Hamad-Schifferli, J.J.
Schwartz, A.T. Santos, S.G. Zhang, and J.M.
Jacobson, Nature (415) pp. 152-155, 2002
Microencapsulated
Electropheresis
B. Comiskey, J.D. Albert,
H. Yoshizawa and J. Jacobson
An Electrophoretic Ink for All-Printed
Reflective Electronic Displays
Nature (394), 253-5 (1998)
Nanotectics
Brent Ridley, Babak Nivi, and Joseph Jacobson,
All-Inorganic Field Effect Transistors Fabricated by Printing,
Science (286) 746, 1999
Printed Memory
(Brian Hubert)
3D Inkjet Printing
(Joe Jacobson)
Printed Electro-Mechanical Systems
MEMS ($1B, 1m) vs PEMS ($1k, 1mm)
Fabrication
m
mm
μm
nm
in
out
Making Anything
How To Make
(almost) Anything
How To Make Something That Makes (almost) Anything
ScreamBody
(Kelly Dobson)
Interpet Explorer
(Irene Pepperberg, Ben Resner)
Personal Toy Fabrication
The Liberal Arts
Literacy
The Trivium
• Grammar
• Rhetoric
• Logic
The Quadrivium
• Arithmetic
• Geometry
• Music
• Astronomy
Liberation, Mastery
Boston
CBA Fab Labs
(Computer Clubhouses, Congress,
National Academies, World Bank, …)
space (mm), time (ms)
fabrication, instrumentation divides
Costa Rica
India
3D scan/mill
modular
electronics
Norway
PCB fab
analytical
instrumentation
Fab Lab Processes
• Precision machining
– PCBs
– 3D output
• NC cutting
–
–
–
–
flex circuits
antennas
interconnect
masks
• Instrumentation
–
–
–
–
optical spectroscopy
microscopy
metrology
3D scanning
• Instrumentation Development
– Towers
– Internet 0
– microcontroller programming
Diesel Timing
(Kalbag, Ike Chuang, Amy Sun, Anil Bahuman)
Appropriate Optical Spectroscopy
(Caroline McEnnis, Jason Taylor, Debu Goswami)
The Tower
• microcontroller
• A/D
• high-speed A/D
• keyboard
• camera
• SRAM
• FLASH
• DC motor
• servo motor
• solenoid
• LEDs
• LCD
• MIDI
• audio
• RS-232
• RS-485
• Tower bus
• I2C
(Bakhtiar Mikhak, Chris Lyon)
• USART
• USB
• ethernet
• 802.11b
• protoboard
• clock
• NC mill
• oscilloscope
• Net computer
•…
Internet 0
(Raffi Krikorian, Sun, …)
$1-10 1-10kB
RS-485, IR, ultrasound, powerline, …
programming
• IP to leaf nodes
• bit size > net size
• shared analog modulation
• peers don’t need servers
• physical programming
• implement function, not spec
• open standards
power
analog I/O
ethernet
serial
control
Commodity
Incremental
Infrastructure
BAWUG, OpenAP, mesh routing
$1-200/hop
Electronic Shepherd
(Haakon Karlson, Solvik Gård, Telenor)
Lyn
Debugging
(Delhi Clubhouse, Mitch Resnick)
Sadbhavana
(Lt. Gen. Arjun Ray, ret.)
To Follow Up
Henry Holt and Company
Cambridge Series on Information and the Natural Sciences
http://cba.mit.edu/~neilg
gersh@cba.mit.edu