Slashdot Mirror
Of Ants and Robots
conJunk writes "The BBC has an interesting story about Ants and their leaderless collective behavior. It goes on to describe these cool little robots called U-bots. They have a super-simple instruction set and if you let them loose in a room full of frisbees it looks, to the casual observer, like intelligent and guided work." From the article: "Being small is going to be a problem. So how can you get a whole bunch of dumb small things doing something smart?"
Unfortunately, you can't get a can of Raid and put an end to a room full of robots when they becme too much of a nuisance...
I'd like to remind them that as a trusted Slashdot personality I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground frisbee caves.
you made hundreds of thousands of these U-Bots and just let em' go! They'd be everywhere looking for frizbees and it would... you know, become an everyday part of life. Out to dinner with the lady and you have to kick one off of the table because it was trying to take her plate. Eventually it would become commonplace to carry a sidearm with one's self to defend one's family frizbee from an inevitable onslaught of war-mongering (although not really, they only look like they have a purpose) washing machine-looking frizbee sorters... Think of the carnage! U-Bots in the bathroom, in the study, out in the yard duking it out with Fido (and with such a simple algorithm, beating fido with completely unfair strategem like turning the frizbee around in Fido's mouth until either his neck breaks or he lets go!) The more intelligent of us would move to Canada and purchase red frizbees with white centers. As for the U-bots They would have a great fortress made of yellow frizbees. And a queen...
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
"So how can you get a whole bunch of dumb small things doing something smart?"
Oh, I don't know. Ask the millions of dumb cells that make up your body. They seem to be doing a pretty good job.