Getting to the place where we need to accomplish a task is a big
limitation most especially when we have piles of task to accomplish at
the same time. How wish we could accomplish a task even when we are not
physically present - Like going to the grocery store, going for one
message or the other.
However, many researchers are hard at work trying to overcome that limitation, no matter how impossible it sounds.
Imagine
a world where you could have sex with someone across the world like you
were there or conduct a remote conference with a version of yourself
that could replicate everything you do, including handling things from
far away. The concept is so futuristic that we aren’t even able to wrap
our heads around how it could be possible. However, a technology
developed by researchers at MIT is already able to do just that to a
large extent.
Known as inFORM, it’s a shape-shifting interface
that can take input from a remote location and precisely replicate
those actions in another. inFORM is only the name of the interface,
though, as they’re now building quite a few other applications on top of
it.
Materiable for example, is one of those applications that
allows you to remotely handle objects and has even been successfully
tested in the lab. It’s able to mimic the properties of a lot of
materials found on Earth, like sand, water, and rubber.
Remote handling is only one of its applications as we don’t even know everything that it could be used for yet.