Programmable magnets

I had the core idea of this in 2006 (binary coded patterns of small magnets for position and orientation sensitivity), but... didn't follow up. Looks like they are doing some interesting stuff with it (and piling on the patents).

The original application I imagined would be very simple arrays to be used in kids' tile puzzles where you could have square-peg-in-square-hole style thinking but without hole geometry (choosing something more semantic instead). Puzzle tiles would only have strong attraction to their correct location and all other locations would be relatively neutral.

This has been an engineering holly grail for quite a while. If validated, the patents for such magnets should make a nice financial windfall for this company. Great news if validated.