Roadmap

# Resolution is the roadmap.

A display gets better as its pixels get smaller and more numerous. Proteus gets better the same way: finer cells, more of them, in more dimensions.

Tiers

## Four rungs. One is funded.

1. **R1 — Programmable surfaces** (funded scope). A single layer of ShapeCells on the Shape Dock, commanded as a sheet whose curvature and folds software sets and the cells hold.
   - **What it buys:** Set-and-hold surfaces for the two beachheads: adaptive tooling surfaces and deployable structures.
   - **Still open:** Calibrating the mapping from commanded state to measured shape across a full array.
2. **R2 — Planar smart material** (research). Cells small and dense enough that the sheet behaves as a material with programmable in-plane and out-of-plane form, rather than as an array of parts.
   - **What it buys:** Sheets that are cut, mounted and reconfigured like stock material.
   - **Still open:** Cell miniaturisation, addressing at density, and inverse design at large cell counts.
3. **R3 — Volumetric smart material** (research). Cells stacked and connected in three dimensions so a volume, not only a surface, takes commanded form.
   - **What it buys:** Programmable solids: parts whose geometry is a software state.
   - **Still open:** Three-dimensional connectivity, load paths through stacked cells, and addressing a volume.
4. **Destination — Fully programmable smart materials** (destination). Matter whose shape is set the way pixels set colour.
   - **What it buys:** Shape as a software-defined property of physical objects.
   - **Still open:** Everything above, at scale.

> **Open problem:** R2 and R3 are research tiers. They are not solved, and they are not in the funded scope. Source: Nanoshape design specification, September 2026.

How to read it

## Each tier is a claim we have to earn.

**R1 is the funded scope.** It is where the architecture has to prove itself: cells that latch, a dock that commands them, and a mapping from commanded state to measured shape.

R2 and R3 depend on things nobody has shown yet at the scale they need, including inverse design at large cell counts, which remains open. We name them because they are where the architecture leads, not because they are close.

The destination is matter whose shape is set the way pixels set colour. Every rung below it is useful on its own.

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Canonical: https://www.nanoshape.ai/roadmap  
Last updated: 2026-10-06

Figures on this site are design targets or architecture descriptions, not measured results. Inverse design at large cell counts is an open problem. No image on the site is a photograph of hardware. All pages: https://www.nanoshape.ai/llms.txt