Programmability

Conventional magnet interaction is binary.  Because one side of each magnet has a positive (or north) polarity and the other side has a negative (or south) polarity, two conventional magnets will either attract or repel each other depending on their polarity orientation. Moreover, the amount of attractive or repellant force produced by the magnets depends on the extent to which they are aligned. In contrast, each side of a correlated magnetic structure comprises an array of magnetic sources having polarities that vary in accordance with a defined program, or code.  Two printed Coded Magnets™ that were programmed using codes A and A’ are shown in Fig. 1. 

Fig. 1. Magnetic Field Scans of Two Complementary Correlated Magnetic Structures
and the Two Coded Magnets Beneath Magnetic Viewing Film

There is one spatial alignment between the two complementary correlated magnetic structures where each magnetic source of each structure is aligned with a complementary magnetic source from the other structure.  In other words, each positive magnetic source of one structure will align with a negative magnetic source from the other structure so that each complementary magnetic source pair produces an attractive force and the combination of all the magnetic sources of the two structures produces a peak attractive force. For other translational or rotational spatial alignments, the complementary magnetic source pairs are not aligned so the magnetic sources of the two structures produce both attractive and repellant forces that cancel each other out. Thus, the various possible spatial alignments of two correlated magnetic structures correspond to a spatial force function, which can be precisely controlled by designing the codes used to program the two structures. The spatial force function corresponding to the two Coded Magnets of Fig. 1 is provided in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Contour Plot and 3D Surface Rendering of the Spatial Force Function of Two Coded Magnets
Programmed Using Codes A and A’

The ability to precisely design magnetic force interaction between two correlated magnetic structures enables designers to produce structures whose behavior meets specific application requirements.  To some extent, coding theory applied to communication and radar signals in the time domain can be applied in the spatial domain when designing correlated magnetic structures but they are exclusively one-dimensional and the magnetic codes are two-, three- or four-dimensional.  Codes can be selected based upon their autocorrelation characteristics, cross-correlation characteristics, etc.  Fig. 6 depicts three spatial force functions produced with three two-dimensional codes where the second two codes are produced by merely reordering the rows of the first code.  Clearly, magnetic forces are programmable.

The number of dimensions to which coding can be applied to design correlated magnetic structures is very high giving the correlated magnetic structure designer many degrees of freedom.  For example, the designer can use coding to vary magnetic source size, shape, polarity, field strength, and location relative to other sources in one, two, or three-dimensional space, and, if using electromagnets or electro-permanent magnets can even change many of the source characteristics in time using a control system. 

Various techniques can also be applied to achieve multi-level magnetism control.  In other words, the interaction between two structures may vary depending on their separation distance.  The possible combinations are essentially unlimited.  With just one structure comprising 19 magnetic sources where only source polarity is varied, the number of possible codes is 2¹⁹ or 524,288 different codes.  Of the possible code combinations, acceptance criteria can be applied to find appropriate codes that can be used to program correlated magnetic structures that have magnetic behavior that meets application requirements. 

Correlated magnetic structures can be designed that have unique identities so as to control which objects will or will not attach (e.g., Code A only attaches to Code A’, B only with B’, etc.), how objects will attach (i.e., translational positioning, rotational orientation, etc.), to precisely control movement of objects using attract or repel forces, to achieve precision object attachment, to attach objects without them touching, to achieve traction without friction, etc.  The ability to program the behavior of correlated magnetic structures makes possible endless possibilities for their use to produce entirely new products and to improve existing products and processes.