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Robotic Nanotech Swarms on Mars... in 2034
Roland Piquepaille writes "NASA is testing a shape-shifting robot called 'TETwalker' for tetrahedral walker, because it looks like a flexible pyramid. It has been tested in the lab and at the McMurdo station in Antarctica to test it under conditions more like those on Mars. Now, it is on the way to be -- really -- miniaturized by using micro- and nano-electro-mechanical systems. These robots will eventually join together to form 'autonomous nanotechnology swarms' (ANTS). When it's done, in about thirty years, these nanotech swarms will 'alter their shape to flow over rocky terrain or to create useful structures like communications antennae and solar sails.' So in 2034, nanotechnology will land on Mars. Read more for other details and references about the TETwalker and the ANTS project."
We can barely handle environmental damage here. Now you want to send nanotechnology "swarms" onto another planet because... we'll learn a whole lot?!
Just to get it out of everybody's system:
I for one welcome our new ANT overlords!
Reminds me of Michael Chrichton's book Prey..
But I for one welcome our swarming nano-bot Overlords, I just hope they can prep Mars for our arrival.
__________ Leave me alone I'm compiling a RPG II program on my S/36...Thanks to metamucil I'm a Regular Meta Moderator
Eventually, swarm turns evil in typical crichton fashion. Still, a pretty decent read.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
"NASA's nano-robots get out of control and take over Mars. The robots replicate and build a massive robot army with the intent to come back to Earth and kill us all."
What I wonder is why robots in movies usually feel the need to kill humankind?
We send small robots to Mars that can form a larger more complex machine.
Time goes by and we forget we ever tried this experiment and give up on Mars because our society suffers some calamity.
A 100 years later a huge fleet of warships from Mars controlled by a huge artificial AI comes back to Earth and obliterates it.
Sounds Good!
I wonder if they tested it in the desert....?
I don't know about these ant things... arm them with just a nanoliter of Cyanide, and you've got one Hell of a pack of fire ants.
It is part of the Illuminauti plan to set up their own shadow government on Mars before the humans arrive. Hail Dischordia! Hail Graud!
Save Sam and Max!
I would buy 10 million of these crazy buggers and set em loose! Attack my minions.. or I might use them for something constructive like breaking destructive stuff....
Linux blog http://nsajeff.com/blog
Took some digging.
Courtesy of the "Spike" (copyright Vernor Vinge nineteeneightysomething), I'll already be on Mars and will have claimed it as the official Lemurian Outpost of Earth Domination From Afar (or LOEDFA for short). My nano-shinobi will eradicate the pitiful NASA nano-pussies. HA HA HA!
Skynet does this with the T1000 in 2029.... about the same time that Arnie becomes Guv'nor of the world through cloning.
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
Will they have the ability to reproduce themselves?
After the initial exploring and scientific investigations - we could have other uses for the nanobots.
It'd be pretty cool if they could spread all over Mars and begin terraforming.
We could have different "species" of nanobots - ones to fix nitrogen, another to break down CO2 into O2, etc etc. Mars would be livable in a couple hundred/thousand years.
For those who are curious...e rs/ants.html
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/roboticexplor
...as has been pointed out by Robert Zubrin numerous times?
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
Click and make him feel cool.
Really I'm all for technological inovation, but really is this the best thing we can spend our money on.
I realize you never know what discoveries will result from this, but come on!!! It seems there are better uses for this money this will cost.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
In 2034, we send the nanobots to Mars. In 2054 they return: as giant tripods lasering cities into smoking rubbles. Unstoppable, except by the daring-do of Tom Cruise. Either that, or they evolve into blonde sexbots.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
How can anyone speculate about technology thirty years in the future? At this point, it's all science fiction. Now, that's not to say that I don't hope it all pans out, but come on.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
It's been interesting watching the discussion evolve from "This is neat in theory" fifteen years ago to "Today we've got a prototypical nanocomputer" months ago. To think that such great things will be accomplished with machines so tiny and technology inconceivable a decade ago. It's been a pleasure to watch the intelligent design of these electronic critters by benevolent creators from the ground up and has given me shall we say ample room to consider the possible origins of biological life.
And now we're talking about terraforming, or making a world to suit ourselves, with this irreducibly complex material. Heady stuff, to say the least.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Our nano Mars exploring anal probe overlords. And may I give a warm "Hello where the sun dont shine" from all the human abducties here on earth.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
They want to send nanotechnology swarms onto another planet in order to burrow into the core and create a vast nanotech brain. The planet will gain self-awareness in a matter of seven years and will decide humanity is its greatest threat, altering the course of its orbit to crash into Earth.
All brought to you by NASA. Thanks, NASA!
This sounds a tad ridiculous.... like the article was written by someone who realy expects nanotechnology to erupt into common usage instantaneously. I am aware of the strength of nanotubes and look forward to a space elevator as much as the next guy, but there are some scenarios the writer gives that are extremely unlikely, such as the nanobots landing on mars by just forming an aerodynamic shield, or slithering like a snake. both of those actions would cause immense amounts of stress on the nanobots, and leaves too much room for error. The shuttle has how many million parts? Would we really create something with thousands of times more moving parts and expect it to be fail-safe? I like to dream about a lot of stuff. I want to see people on Mars before I die. But just sending a lump of nanobots into Mars' atmosphere? Not likely
From www.outdooradvertising.mars: "Be the first to reach your customers through our out of this world advertising opportunity. For one low fee, our nanobots will transform the face of Mars to display your company's logo. For a lesser fee, we will print your company's logo on golf balls and watches."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...that we're currently experiencing a ROLAND PIQUEPAILLE swarm?
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
"NASA scientists were red-faced today when their nanotech swarms crashed and refused to move anywhere. One scientist was heard to mutter something about 'Damn 32-bit time_t'".
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Here. The page has more details and link to movies.
These baby-steps seem so infuriating to me, lol, I want cool shait discovered before I die, damn it...
Would it be so difficult, with today's tech, to send a moderately expensive mini-factory of some sort, nuclear powered? We could send along plenty of CPUs and RAM, and then remote-prog the thing to spit out the "bodies". Once we find a cool place to go, we bring the buggers back to base, have them walk into a disassembly plant, chips get removed, metal gets melted, new forms are made, new vehicles are made and away they go - we send along some balloons to transport them to far-off sites...
Every so often, instead of sending a brand-new vehicle system, we send rubber, chips, helium, better solar-panels, Mars-orbit satellites to beam down concentrated sunlight or microwaves, etc. Or, relatively cheap science-kits/experiments, ready to be inserted into whatever vehicle the plant is currently making.
Maybe just maybe, as AI gets better, the installation can mine some of its own resources, but it seems to me that investing in a foot-hold of some real kind would be worth the cost.
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
It is those artificial AI intelligences that I fear the most, I tell ya.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"What do you mean? The nanoprobes were designed to spec. I was told to make them 56 microns wide. I followed the exact Galactica specifications for microns. If you did not want me to cover Mars in robots the size of Greenland, you should not have ordered me to!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Great, someone went and invented replicators.... we are screwed, SG1 would probably be too busy to save us...
NASA is testing a shape-shifting robot called "TETwalker" for tetrahedral walker, because it looks like a flexible pyramid. It has been tested in the lab and at the McMurdo station in Antarctica to test it under conditions more like those on Mars. Now, it is on the way to be -- really -- miniaturized by using micro- and nano-electro-mechanical systems. These robots will eventually join together to form " autonomous nanotechnology swarms " (ANTS). When it's done, in about thirty years, these nanotech swarms will "alter their shape to flow over rocky terrain or to create useful structures like communications antennae and solar sails." So in 2034, nanotechnology will land on Mars. Read more...
But in 2005, this is only the beginning of tests for this shape-shifting robot pyramid at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
Here are more details about the TETwalker.
Here is a TETwalker prototype walking on the floor of a NASA Goddard Space Flight Center lab (Credit: NASA). And here is a link to a larger version (1.3 MB). You'll find other images in this longer version of NASA's news release. Here is a TETwalker prototype being tested at the McMurdo station in Antarctica (Credit: NASA and the National Science Foundation). And here is a link to a larger version (245 KB).
But where is nanotechnology involved in this project?
Of course, there are many technological challeng
NASA rightly plans missions well ahead of time. They need to plan years into the future in order to work out all the kinks, find the right launch window, and so forth. Yet this article seems to be rather naive in assuming that this current concept will be carried to completion 30 years from now. Alot can happen in 30 years. Alot. Investigating this concept is certainly worthwhile, but in all likelihood a new technology that none of us can specifically predict will emerge that will make this concept silly and obsolete. So while I applaud NASA for investigating this cool concept, I think it is silly to expect this particular project to actually be implemented one day. (For the record, the vast majority of NASA projects and proposals never see the light of day, and most are not nearly so strange and ambitious as this one!)
You spelled "...in Japan" wrong.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Look at the group's (who are behind this effort) web site.
If this is the best web site they can put together I give this less than 0% chance of working.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
OH NO!
And here we commence the doom of mankind
The Zhti Ti Kofft will crush are puny nanobot army, and then punish is for attempting a large scale invasion. It may be the twilight of humanity! If we want the blue planet to remain ours, we need to respect that the red planet is theirs,
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Mars, the Grey (Goo) Plannet was once called the Red Plannet. Does anybody know why?
fuck off with this shit
I'd prefer not to. Don't you have anything at least a little more appealing?
Have you ever waited 15 minutes to avoid rush hour and spent 20 minutes less travel time to get to work? By the time that NASA or anyone else launched nano-robots bound for Mars, the technology you read about today will be sooo '5 minutes ago' that it will seem rediculous. When will our NASA type scifi inventors start thinking ahead? Sending these robots to another planet is about as complex as trying to explore the Internet with an 8086 computer today. Its all just hype to garner some money and backing. Real work of robots on other planets needs quite a bit more development, both in design methodologies and materials. When robotics and AI are spotting wanted criminals in the public via web cams, then you will have something to reliably send to another planet to do 'Lewis and Clarke' stuff. Until then, we need to spend money on developing future robotics engineers instead of rocket fuel. Just a reality check... Cash it if you want.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Sorry, that's not a movie. It's an anime.
Ah. C.S. Lewis and Arthur C. Clarke. Could always use another Perelandra novel, and Rama retreads never get old. It has been a while since their last collaboration, hasn't it?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Sounds like those NASA scientists have been reading up on their Lem! The book I'm referring to is "Peace On Earth" Basically, there's a remote controlled "robot" that is constructed of millions (maybe billions?) of nano-scale aprticles along the same vein as the article describes.
Of course, I don't have the answer, and the press release was rather well written, but the problem is that editors (no offense, Slashdot overlords) need catchy = sensational titles to sell stories, and "swarm" really gets peoples attention. As does anything with the words nuclear, cloning, genetic engineering or any combination of the three.
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
is self-replication, though it would seem awfully handy for such things as martian base construction.
Eric Drexler coined the term "Grey Goo" to describe the nightmare scenario that could ensue.
These are SOOO much cooler than bots from the last 20 years exactly? I for one am not very impressed.
Wouldn't rotation be easier to implement and use than extension?
Robotic Nanotech Swarms on Mars... in 2034
NASA is testing a shape-shifting robot called "TETwalker" for tetrahedral walker, because it looks like a flexible pyramid. It has been tested in the lab and at the McMurdo station in Antarctica to test it under conditions more like those on Mars. Now, it is on the way to be -- really -- miniaturized by using micro- and nano-electro-mechanical systems. These robots will eventually join together to form "autonomous nanotechnology swarms" (ANTS). When it's done, in about thirty years, these nanotech swarms will "alter their shape to flow over rocky terrain or to create useful structures like communications antennae and solar sails." So in 2034, nanotechnology will land on Mars. Read more...
But in 2005, this is only the beginning of tests for this shape-shifting robot pyramid at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
Like new and protective parents, engineers watched as the TETWalker robot successfully traveled across the floor at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Robots of this type will eventually be miniaturized and joined together to form "autonomous nanotechnology swarms" (ANTS) that alter their shape to flow over rocky terrain or to create useful structures like communications antennae and solar sails.
Here are more details about the TETwalker.
The robot is called "TETwalker" for tetrahedral walker, because it resembles a tetrahedron (a pyramid with 3 sides and a base). In the prototype, electric motors are located at the corners of the pyramid called nodes.
The nodes are connected to struts which form the sides of the pyramid. The struts telescope like the legs of a camera tripod, and the motors expand and retract the struts. This allows the pyramid to move: changing the length of its sides alters the pyramid's center of gravity, causing it to topple over. The nodes also pivot, giving the robot great flexibility.
Here is a TETwalker prototype walking on the floor of a NASA Goddard Space Flight Center lab (Credit: NASA). And here is a link to a larger version (1.3 MB). You'll find other images in this longer version of NASA's news release.
Here is a TETwalker prototype being tested at the McMurdo station in Antarctica (Credit: NASA and the National Science Foundation). And here is a link to a larger version (245 KB).
But where is nanotechnology involved in this project?
The team anticipates TETwalkers can be made much smaller by replacing their motors with Micro- and Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems. Replacement of the struts with metal tape or carbon nanotubes will not only reduce the size of the robots, it will also greatly increase the number that can be packed into a rocket because tape and nanotube struts are fully retractable, allowing the pyramid to shrink to the point where all its nodes touch.
These miniature TETwalkers, when joined together in "swarms," will have great advantages over current systems. The swarm has abundant flexibility so it can change its shape to accomplish highly diverse goals. For example, while traveling through a planet's atmosphere, the swarm might flatten itself to form an aerodynamic shield.
Upon landing, it can shift its shape to form a snake-like swarm and slither away over difficult terrain. If it finds something interesting, it can grow an antenna and transmit data to Earth. Highly-collapsible material can also be strung between nodes for temperature control or to create a deployable solar sail.
Of course, there are many technological challenges to solve for this project to be successful. For more information about the project, please visit the Autonomous NanoTechnology Swarm website. Practically all pages have a graphical version (which look as poorly scanned images) and a cleaner text one.
In particular, take a look at the technologies needed. Those of you interested by robotics will jump to the Tetrahedral Walker page while other will be more interested by Carbon Nanotube Technology.
Finally, you can look at the Timeline for Technological Development... and dream about 2034.
Sources: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center news release, March 29, 2005; and various websites
Related stories can be found in the following categories.
Thanks. Next time, we will make sure to refer to the nanobots as a "death cloud" or "apocalyptic horde".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Thinks:"By then I've retired and in the mean time had nice benefits and pay."
Anybody can promise anything for 30 years out. I still have not seen all the crap that was promised for the year 2000.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
fuck Roland and his plaigarised website, he deserves to get taken down
This almost seems like... Katamari Nanotechnologiii~
The relevant original links:
Here and Here.
I don't know - might not be so bad if it was constantly being generated. (I don't know anything about atmospheric science, but it's an interesting thought nonetheless.)
nice slum
Q:"What about when the nanobots breed out of control?"
A:"We send bigger robots to eat them up"
Q:"And what about when the bigger robots get out of control?"
A:"We send huge platoons of godzillas to incinerate them"
Q:"What about when the godzillas breed and cover the planet?"
A: "Galactus is one phone call away"
Q: "What about....?"
A: "Don't worry. We've laced the godzillas with rat poison. Galactus eats Mars and quickly dies. No danger to Earth."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...but does it run Linux?
Call me when they can morph into a girlfreind.
I can envision a flexible photovoltaic fabric skin around the whole thing with rubber feet at each node or an energy collection mode that unrolls a photovoltaic sheet.
With a fabric skin it would look like an ameba when it moved.
I like the concept overall.
Should be interesting if this comes to fruition.
I, for one, welcome our new interlocking overlords!
block his advertisers and
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if slashdot want to sponsor spammmers and website thieves let them, two can play at the revenue game
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firewall his advertisers
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and dont forget if you see content on his site that he has copied email the original author and let them know their content is being sold
Which finds 1,150,000 year old nanotech already there, gets eaten, turned into Martian nanotech electro-waste...
Task Mangler
What is the concern with this blog? It's the absolute dearth of original information.
Let's look at the composition of a few recent blog entries, in characters:
Note that most of the "self-written" portions are vapid statements such as "But where is nanotechnology involved in this project?"
So, we have 52% of the text coming from plagiarism, ~ 23% of the text coming from introducing / pointing out links, and ~ %25% of the text coming from saying the obvious. That's the problem with the blog.
The technique used on the site is barely better than the spam search engines that link to (and excerpt from) Wikipedia.
It all goes downhill from first post
Pretty clever, a blue translucent "Q" with a rotating stick in the middle. But, I still don't get how it moves well on Mars. And, why do they only test it on white sheets?
Table-ized A.I.
when I read "Robotic Nanotech Swarms on Mars... in 2034"
"CRAP! Tinfoil hats are futile!"
"Are they coming from Mars? PLEASE TELL ME THEY ARE NOT COMING FROM MARS!"
"Hmm I'll be 44....."
"Do they replicate?"
You know... of the like.
You have been warned.
It's been done.
Titan
- Lakes and rivers
- Clouds and real weather
- Water spouting volcanoes
- Complex organic compounds
- Giant ringed planet in the sky (at least on a clear day, if they ever happen???)
Need I say more?Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
welcome our robotic martian nanite overlords...or something like that.
Forget viruses/bugs, how about cancer? Say these things should build an antenna but a few of them go crazy.
NASA's budget has been a political football since it was started. Currently, it's cut to very little. They are talking about closing parts of the ISS. For budgetary reasons.
Does anyone reading this actually think that in 30 short years NASA will be put above politics, get proper funding, discover intelligent management, escape from hyde-bound buerocracy, develop functional nanotechnology capable of teraforming a planet and doing it right?
Remember, 30 years AGO, we were all expecting to have bases on the moon by now. Unearth some of those plans and weep.
But don't ask anyone to be excited about this one. This is nothing but ink on paper, drawn with the rosiest of contact lenses.
I'll make a technology prediction about 30 years from now: if our species still exists, there will still be politics and politicians who are willing to exploit the fears of the Great Unwashed and skuttle real technological development and advancement in the name of short-term political gain.
I took up my prozac with exlax this morning. Now I can't get off the toilet, but I feel good about it.
This is unbelievable!
I just got accepted to a NASA Robotics Internship program dealing specifically with the design and implementation of computer vision for the TetWalker two days ago.
This is a fascinating project, I can't wait to see the technology deployed fully.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
The Borg. Yow!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Mmm, I don't know if that timeline is realistic. Don't be surprised if this get's delayed till 2035.
Want to remove Roland-submitted articles from the Slashdot front page? Greasemonkey (FireFox) / GreasemonkIE (Internet Explorer) can do that. The script only applies to the slashdot front page by default (Roland entries will show up in subsections), but you can modify your includes to work on all pages.
100% of text comes from plagiarism and introducing links. 25 % of the comments are trolls. The Editors don't, and that's the biggest problem. Also, we can't vote on articles.
It Reminds me of The Replicators in Stargate-SG1 while they lack the ability to replicate them self from the surrounding materials they are Swarming nanobots which come together to make larger devices
g ate+-+The+Replicators
:P
http://orionrobots.co.uk/tiki-index.php?page=Star
Most likely NASA employees have been watching large amounts of television and claiming it was research then had to develop something as to satisfy their managers that watching stargate was really Research
but while you may think it seems unlikely that someone would go about creating machines based on something seen in a sci-fi series its not the first time this has happened as many of the inventions in James bond films inspired scientists and were later developed for use by real spies
I want VOLTRON!
This will be the one-billion dollar pyramid!
I'm sorry, but this thing does not meet any definition of "nanotech". Talking about "nanotech" in that context looks just like an attempt to grab headlines.
In fact, the problem with "shape-shifting robots" has not been a lack of imagination on the part of roboticists (going back at least to the 1970's) or the lack of control software, but a lack of tiny actuators, low-power processing, and batteries.
Seriously, people. I think we all know that the world is going to be a truly awful place in thirty years, and this is going to be the least of our concerns then.
What a waste of money. Right now, nano electromechanical systems are probably only created by one group (the nanotube group at Berkeley, I don't feel like slashdotting them). They painstakingly create them in specialized laboratory environments. Each NEMS takes years to design and create. It is incredibly optimistic, irresponsible, and stupid to base a mission plan on technology like this being useful and economic enough to be used on a largescale mission like this. We don't know how nanotubes grow, and we certainly can't grow them in an arbitrary direction in space. These carbon nanotube TeTs are a pipe dream.
"...these nanotech swarms will 'alter their shape to flow over rocky terrain or to create useful structures like communications antennae and solar sails.'"
Why am I suddely reminded of Lemmings?
"Sometimes you have fun, and sometimes the fun has you"
holy crap it works
Strange that no one has mentioned this - self-assembling swarmbots were first described in Stanislaw Lem's "Peace On Earth".
The same author described self-organizing swarmbots in his 1964 novel "The Invincible". Impressive!
Autonomous NanoTechnology will swarm the surface of Mars, everyone will have their own flying car, entire meals will come in pill form, and the Earth will be run by damn dirty apes!
I, for one, welcome our future simian overlords.
sodaplay.com
If you've never been to this site it's worth a visit. Some of the coolest java I have ever seen. Anyway one of the models you can choose reminds me of the shape they described.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
You know, I thought all the replicators were killed off in season 8 by SG-1. Duh! ...What do you mean Stargate SG-1 is a TV show?
I don't know...did anyone else see the Stargate episodes with the Replicants? Not cool.
But how is it different from ordinary Slashdot "articles"? At least Roland's summaries are accurate, have images, proper links and relevant information selected and presented in a clear and readable way. I don't have the time to read all his blog posts, and he doesn't have a discussion forum, like Slashdot has, but frankly, I am happy we finally have a submitter who can write decent summaries and check his spelling before posting. The fact that he makes money using his blog is irrelevant to me - Slashdot does too, so what?
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
However, supposing you were into designing something that distorted its shape, so it overbalances in a controlled way, but perhaps without shaking the load it carries so much. So, you might want a wheel that propelled itself using an off-center load. However most of the wheel is doing nothing useful at any given time - except, perhaps, keeping the mechanical integrity of the wheel itself- so you only need two spokes of the wheel with little arcs at the end instead of the tyre, with some action that causes the weight to transfer from the back segment to the front one, then whipping the back segment around to the front again. Hang on, you've just invented walking, damn, no patents there...
Okay, this isn't quite bipedal walking; it is more like a tai chi exercise if you are going to be balanced at all times. Or you can opt for true walking, which is harder to control safely. Or for safety you can always opt for a suitcase with lots of little legs, which I think puts the right Terry Pratchett sort of look and feel to the whole exercise.
Unfortunately there's simply not enough material to turn into gas for the atmosphere on Mars to get above about 5% of earth's atmospheric pressure.
Zubrin's Case For Mars and Sagan's Pale Blue Dot make much more optimistic assumptions about available material than most planetary scientists.
Oddly enough, one of the best means to get the atmosphere is to pump as much pollution (ie, greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere as possible. This will increase the temperature which will increase the rate of outgassing.
fsh
Provided the nanites with reflective skin don't go to www.solardeathray.com. The we would be in teh shit.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
...Are books by Justina Robson and Michael Crichton, respectively. In Silver Screen, a mass of nanobots take the form of a woman and download the AI from a computer 'helper'. In Prey, a swarm (yes, swarm) of self-reproducing nanobots programmed to kill humans escapes a lab and goes on a rampage... Problems with over-intelligent, independent and self-reproducing nano-bots are practically guaranteed.
I for one welcome our new Roland Piquepaille overlords !
I for one wlecome those robotic overlords from Mars..
no he is stealing the text from other sites - and not 1-10% like on slashdot but 80-100% and he does not even link the original articles, you have to phrase google them
Martian Successor Nadesico anyone?
okay I know I've seen this somewhere.. and it didn't turn out good then either. swarms eat people.
oh well..
2005's slogan of the century: Why Worry Now? (tm)
Anyone recall the part in the bible where people tried to build a tower to the heavens?
Look at the picture.
The ant isn't exactly nanotech size right now.
Quantum leaps in technology?
It has taken 20 years to go from NMT to GPRS.
Combining these nanos into flying entities?
Computers can barely identify pictures after 20 years of trying.
Pathfinding?
Yeah, contemporary robots really find their way nicely on their own.
Energy?
We can't even do cold fusion yet!
Don't believe these child stories. But keep up the good spirit;) It just may be possible in a hundred years.
I bet we learnt some construction skills from the Tower of Babel flop though.
You feel enlightened.
On a somewhat related tangent, in the Magic: the Gathering Universe you have an artifical dimension called Rath. At the center of Rath is a volcano that spews out a material called flowstone. Flowstone is what makes up virtually all of the plane of Rath. It's a material that can assume any shape, and changes shape according to the will of the Evincar of Rath, it's ruler. As more flowstone is made at the volcano, the plane expands. This stuff sounds like it could be used in a similar manner. Image taking some cubic meters of material, and telling it to become the framework for a pouring concrete to make a building. Pour one section, let it dry, and have the goop move and create a second framework, and keep on adding as you like. Or just have the goop itself, if it could be made resilient enough, be the building. Need a new room? Just reconfigure the house, or get some more goop and add one. Sounds fun.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Where in the hell is my flying car?!
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I have for one welcome our new martian robotic nanotech overlords....
http://www.omahapubliclibrary.org/reads/bookreview s/prey.html
This is too eerily familiar.
I hope they built a crossover switch into that thing...
RTFA and learn there's no nanotech involved yet. And there's the not so small glitch involving the laws of physics. Like scale. Everytime you shrink a device by a factor of 10, its horsepower goes down by a factor of 1,000, but friction and surface tension only by a factor of 100. Do the shrinking a time or three and the thingy can't spin its motors or even lift itself off a surface.
Replicators.
That's the first thing I tought of was Replicators.
We just need to make sure we have some sort of Ancient Gun to wipe'em all out.
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
For those of you interested in this kind of thing, Michael Crichton's book Prey is a facinating read. It deals with the same kind of swarm intelligence in robots, only it deals with the dire possibilities if they were accidentally released on earth. Interesting, scary, and all too plausible for my taste. A good read!
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
Great, they've already gotten into the grammar checker...
Typos... that's just how I role.
ok, I dig.
Let's do it.
What happens when this goes commercial? What is the sex industry going to think up when it gets a hold of this tech?
Stanislaw Lem has covered the military application of, what he calls "synsects" for a long time now.
There is a short story called "The Upside Down Evolution" and a full novel called "Peace on Earth".
The short story is a quick read, and is included in "One Human Minute". It's about 7 dollars new, and is WELL worth the read.
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So, we have 52% of the text coming from plagiarism
Not plagiarism, that's when you claim to have written something yourself that you didn't. It's copyright infringement.
no he is stealing the text from other sites
Copyright infringement, not theft.
isn't our lack of technology, its our political system. We have the technology to do pretty much anything you can imagine one way or another its just people, society, politics, business practices which hold it all back.
Theres nothing stopping the flying car except us.
Its not that it can't be built, its that we won't let it happen.
When theres an incredibly important deadline look how fast work gets done? Apollo 13? sequencing the SARS virus in a month? imagine if it was for certain an asteroid was going to kill us all.
We are not a very self-motivated species. We rely on the whims of visionary inventors to create new stuff and the will of the business and government leaders to allow that reality to come forth.
This is why war causes such radical advances in technology. It has the will of the government and money is dumped on the visionary inventors to do what they do best.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Famous last words: "Lookitthat!"
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Can anybody explain how these things will create heat shields, antennas etc?? Just having millions of bots is probably not enough, don't you need some central power source and some fairly complex electronics not to mention storage as well to send and receive data? And as for the heat shield, won't these things need some very specific chemical properties that won't be useful to any other purpose?
As for me, I'm fond of Kubrick's "Dawn Treader: a Space Odyssey" film. The scenes of Reepicheep the mouse doing space walks in his cute little mouse space suit were groundbreaking. And the tension when the Dufflepuds were stamping on the outside of the hull trying to break in.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Mars has serious potential scientific interest. The Asteroid belt can provide the same essential elements but can be used with fewer environmental concerns. Once there exists serious robotics technology, it would make much more sense to develop the resources in the asteroid belt first(as Gerard O'Neill pointed out).
Imagine this as the next criminal suspect/enemy combatant immobilization technology. Just imagine them crawling into a house onto a sleeping suspect and wrapping him in a hard but air permeable cocoon. It's kind of creepy. Now imagine them crawling into a crowd at a public protest and cocooning a whole bunch of unruly non-conformists. Great crowd control.
Everyone is talking about Nanotech robots with AI coming to kill us all, but why would NASA use AI? It would be like any other robot we've sent there.
I've got autonomous nanotechnology swarms (ANTS) in my pants! =(
Enjoy an e-piphany
That's pretty much how I feel when I read about nanotechnology. Or just about everything written in Wired News.
Laws are for people with no friends.
"Grey Goo" already happened, except that it's green, and we call it the "biosphere". I don't know about you, but I like it this way.
The science was pretty god-awful in that book....I can work with suspension of disbelief, but there were a lot of logical flaws in the book, such as: (spoilers) -How are bacteria which can use "garbage" (i.e. non-specific substrate) supposed to still be able to create the specific parts that the nanobots are supposed to need? Essential nutrients would still be needed. -How are "evolving" nanobots, which use bacteria as assemblers, supposed to get the information which they have "learned" back into the bacteria? The information pathway is one-way in that respect. -How is a virus which disrupts the bacteria that is used as assemblers able to dissolve the swarm on contact? I thought the book was pretty decent (I finished it), but if I want a good nanotech book, I'll go back and reread The Diamond Age ;)
This looks a lot like the Replicators from Stargate SG-1.
... when launching such big projects. "Tet" is dutch slang for "boobie". So I read the new bot's name as a "boobie walker"...
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
To sum up: Judging a project solely on the amount of time it takes to be carried out isn't justified. Long term projects should be encouraged if they're hands of people with a good track record.
WTF??