DisruptIt

Intel scientists are hard at work at more than just shoving another 8 chips in a single package, they are working on some very interesting future technology that if matures will have an impact as large as the computer chip itself.

Intel is working on what it has dubbed " Dynamic Physical Rendering". Dynamic Physical Rendering is a process in which many smaller pieces self form into larger and much more comples shapes. These smaller pieces are individivual robots of sorts dubbed "catoms". Catoms, are little robots, that currently use electromagnets to attach to one another and move around, in theory, with advancement they could form virtually any common object or mimic complex items such as a cellphone in theory. One example they used is to use the "catoms" to form a physical doctor, in another entire location, that would look exactly like a real doctor somewhere else, the real doctor would control the "Rendered doctor", and perform the surgery. That of course is just one application. You can think of all kinds of possibilities depending on how small these things eventually get and the level of computational ability of the robot horde. 

Possible applications, I can think of off hand:

The HoloDeck of Star Trek variety. This trumps all the risks in my mind. Really what isn't worth the chance to get a room that could form into anything? I don't think there is.

Prison Control: Why endanger or pay a human, when you can send in a group of mimiced guards that can be ordered to perform tasks on inmates. Riots control, Searches, and such would be ideally suited, if the catoms could display sufficient strenght and cohesion. 

Police assistance: Instead of pairing Police officers in groups a much better approach would be to send the "rendered" police officer to the vehicle in order to assess the situation. Again depending on how these catoms evolve they may be able to replace Police, and be controlled from a central location. 

Any type of Factory oriented labor could be replaced, as not all factory positions can be filled by in place or rigidly designed robots. This would complete that gap, and even could replace technicians for most common maintenance and diagnostic tasks. 

 Military, trully the frightening vision is the military applications. Instead of having humans fight wars and possibly get killed, send in centrally controlled mimics. These rendered beings, could perform very efficiently as a team encompassing 100,000's of rendered soldiers. It's unlikely they'd use such an inefficient form though except in cases were human social interaction was concerned. 

Spying. These small catoms could in theory get into about any place on the planet, as long as they have a power supply. Seeing that it is impossible to seal any human dwelling to millimeter level precision everywhere, and the commonness of power lines, that these could in theory, enter any location anytime, and act as moving, spy apparatus. Scary thought. 

 Greeters, Store Assistants. Why pay someone to say welcome to "Wal-Mart" when you could form your own attractive, precisely selected face to represent your company at the door. Again, why pay someone to point someone to product when a catom based store helper would literally have a 100% knowledge of every single product in your entire store. Sorry Wal-Mart workers, this would most certainly happen. 

 Really with such a technology, the only applications left for humans, is that of creativity which is good I suppose if there are enough creative jobs to go around. 

Full text of the article I derived my views from below.