A transporter is a teleportation apparatus that relocates a physical entity.

It dematerializes the person or object to be relocated by converting it from matter into an energy pattern and then beaming the energy pattern to a target location.

The transporter rematerializes the entity by converting the energy pattern back to matter.

If the energy pattern gets distorted during the beaming process, the person or object may be unpredictably altered when reconverted to matter.