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."

Comments

Heh.

[ggvaidya]

Just to get it out of everybody's system:

I for one welcome our new ANT overlords!

Re:Heh.

[CrazyJim1]

"It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves."

Re:Heh.

[Rosonowski]

Unless of course it was the sound of the joke going over my head. Who knows?

Sounds like a good movie idea.

[Mortlath]

I can see Hollywood making a movie out of this idea:

"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?

Re:Sounds like a good movie idea.

[blincoln]

What I wonder is why robots in movies usually feel the need to kill humankind?

Humans are unpredictable creatures with a history of xenophobia and slaughter on a scale that they can't even properly comprehend.

Exterminating that potential threat seems like a logical course of action for machine intelligence once it can survive on its own.

Re:Sounds like a good movie idea.

[Kiryat Malachi]

If you'd been living with this pain in all the diodes down your left side for the last hundred million years, you'd want to kill a human too.

So lets see what happens ...

[DARKFORCE123]

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!

Re:So lets see what happens ...

[Karl Tacheron]

A 100 years later a huge fleet of warships from Mars controlled by a huge artificial AI comes back to Earth and obliterates it.

Powered by a double redundancy drive?

Re:So lets see what happens ...

[SEWilco]

A 100 years later a huge fleet of warships from Mars controlled by a huge artificial AI comes back to Earth and obliterates it.

Powered by a double redundancy drive?

It is really, really artificial. We just have to have a man on Mars so it is manmade-manmade.

Oh noes #2!

[dauthur]

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.

Illuminautis on Mars!

[Popadopolis]

It is part of the Illuminauti plan to set up their own shadow government on Mars before the humans arrive. Hail Dischordia! Hail Graud!

Movie Link

[Anonymous Coward]

Took some digging.

Re:Movie Link

[Phil246]

if you watched the video you`ll find its completely unrelated to mars, rather about surveying asteroids.
regardless its still an interesting video :)

Reproduction?

[pomegranatesix]

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.

Re:Reproduction?

[RecycledElectrons]

> We could have different "species" of
> nanobots - ones to fix nitrogen,
> another to break down CO2 into O2,
> etc etc.

We've already got those species - they are called bacteria.

Andy Out!

Re:Reproduction?

[pomegranatesix]

I'm scared of things that have the potential to be pathogenic. Not to mention terrestrial bacteria might not be so hapyp on Mars, though some have been found in some pretty harsh conditions. Robots might be a tiny bit safer; just wipe out their circuits with a giant electromagnetic pulse. (I read that in a scifi novel way back, heh.)

Re:Reproduction?

[gwydion04]

Could be a bad idea... don't forget the concept of "Grey Goo".

Re:Reproduction?

[pomegranatesix]

That's true. Evolution is one wily mother. Kinda blurs the line between what's alive and what's machine. I can't even fathom how it'd even reproduce: would it just construct copies of itself? Or would it pass down traits in the form of genes? Would there be mutations, and if so, would there be any sort of selection force? Especially if there aren't predators or really any factors that would influence the viability of any particular mutation over another. After all - these aren't organic. They don't have metabolisms or much beyond a certain energy requirement. (I don't even know what I'm talking about, except this really interests me as a first year biochemistry major.)

Link to the TETwalker

[scdeimos]

For those who are curious...
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/roboticexplore rs/ants.html

Why send "ANTS" when we can send people...

[tquinlan]

...as has been pointed out by Robert Zubrin numerous times?

Roland Piquepaille article

[Anonymous Coward]

Click and make him feel cool.

Seriously

[pegasustonans]

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.

Nanotechnology and futurism.

[Sheetrock]

I hang out on the nanotechnology newsgroup, and while there are a number of complexities standing between a handful of silicone today and a handful of nanobots tomorrow I am optimistic we will see practical nanotechnology within our lifetimes.

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.

Re:Nanotechnology and futurism.

[erichill]

When I showed Drexler's original NAS paper to my grandfather, a physicist who get his Ph.D. under Millikan in 1932, his reaction was, "Hurrumpph, this is pretty presumptious!" And then went on about how alpha helix had been synthesised, but that's a long way from what Drexler was talking about. He died before STMs and the like came on the scene. He still would have "hurrumpphed."

It really is amazing to live in a time of such progress and have the means to observe it, and occasionally participate.

Re:Nanotechnology and futurism.

[noidentity]

while there are a number of complexities standing between a handful of silicone today and a handful of nanobots

I'll take a couple of handfuls of silicone, assuming it's in the proper ahem "envelope".

No

[bonch]

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!

Plausibility

[trevdak]

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

Re:Plausibility

[whitis]

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

You didn't really read the articles, did you? They specifically described the nanobots climbing inside a heat sheild capsule for entry but reemerging and forming a parasail for landing. They specifically mentioned that the systems are self repairing. The tetrahedrons have the ability to connect and disconnect from adjacent tetrahedrons which allows the "organism" to form more complex shapes. So, if one fails, the "organism" can simply spit it out and walk a new one into its place or have its neighbors take up the slack. You are right that stresses will be considerable but bear in mind that you gain the advantages of the liliputian effect, nanotubes, etc. When I lift a ten pound weight with my arm, the stresses are quite high compared to a single cell but the weight is distributed over thousands of muscle cells. Single layer structures may be weak but multilayer laminated structures are much stronger. You can make rigid structures out of materials that appear quite flimsy. A piece of wood is composed of cells that individually are weak. A sheet of paper is week in compression (except across its thickness) but if you take 500 sheets of paper and glue them together, you have something that withstands compression and bending in any direction. Also, look at a space truss roof (such as at the national air and space museum). And we are talking about a structure that can reorganize itself to withstand particular stresses or reduce them.

In fact, the fault tolerance of ANTS was cited as an advantage over systems such as the space shuttle. Unlike systems like the shuttle where you try to build three of every system for redundancy (and it often expands more than threefold - it takes six valves to replace one valve), the parts in ANTS are largely interchangable. So, if you have 25% extra cells, you can lose one fifth of the cells in the organism - anywhere - and it can still function. Lose more than a fifth, and it may still be able to recast itself as a more petite version of the same system.

And since in many cases you don't need all the components of a system simultaneously, the system can reconfigure itself into those components needed at a given time. I can image the same swarm functioning as a space blimp to get most of the way out of orbit, as a parabolic antenna or solar sail enroute, as a glider or parachute on re-entry, and as a giant tread while moving around the surface. There are also some novel possibilities I can imagine (may or may not work) that get around certain other problems by radically changing the approach. Space shuttle tiles have to deal with horendous temperatures because the energy from reentry is absorbed quickly and converted to heat. But what if the swarm converted itself into a sparse mesh that gradually absorbed the energy over the course of 10 loops around the planet? Yes, the orbit would decay as the energy was lost but by turning into a glider of sorts it could keep itself aloft by aerodynamic rather than centrifical forces. Perhaps one could even eliminate the need for a separate reentry capsule with heat shield. Or, heat shields could be made up of large rigid components that can be joined together

Why do I get the feeling...

[TrumpetPower!]

...that we're currently experiencing a ROLAND PIQUEPAILLE swarm?

Cheers,

b&

The news in 2034

[rhysweatherley]

"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'".

Roland

[Lord_Dweomer]

Wish there was a way to mark Roland articles so we could omit them and deny him his precious ad revenue.

NASA's ANTS webpage

[karvind]

Here. The page has more details and link to movies.

cool beans

[dahlek]

But, that LONG? I think it might be worth spending more money on more complex systems that are more versatile and can walk around up there basically for years instead of weeks or months...

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.

Robotic robots from Mars!

[AtariAmarok]

"by a huge artificial AI comes back to Earth"

It is those artificial AI intelligences that I fear the most, I tell ya.

Re:Whoa!

[NanoGator]

"We can barely handle environmental damage here. Now you want to send nanotechnology "swarms" onto another planet because... we'll learn a whole lot?!"

You'd rather they unleash them here?

Oh hell...

[WoodSmoke]

Great, someone went and invented replicators.... we are screwed, SG1 would probably be too busy to save us...

Not a good idea.

[uncoveror]

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,

"Lewis and Clarke"?

[AtariAmarok]

"another planet to do 'Lewis and Clarke' stuff"

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?

Re:"Lewis and Clarke"?

[gwydion04]

Wouldn't it be Malacandra in this case? ;-)

Let's just make sure that the first astronaut (taikonaut?) that goes to Mars isn't named Dr. Weston.

Though Perelandra did have the cavorting naked green Eve and her little dragon pet, which argues in its favor...

(goes off to reread C.S. Lewis)

One capability they should *NOT* implement

[gwydion04]

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.

Thanks

[AtariAmarok]

Thanks. Next time, we will make sure to refer to the nanobots as a "death cloud" or "apocalyptic horde".

Re:Thanks

[Bifurcati]

Sorry - those terms are already reserved for telemarketers and Jehovah's Witnesses, respectively. :)

Anything in 30 years

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Public statment: "Fund us and we promise you nonobots 30 years from now."

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.

Bypass Roland Piquepaille

[elronxenu]

The relevant original links:
Here and Here.

Re:Pyramid?

[GizmoDuck]

Check your facts. A pyramid can have any polygon for a base. The Egyptian pyramids (among others) happen to have square bases.

And when the nanobots breed out of control?

[AtariAmarok]

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."

So where is the energy source?

[qualico]

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.

NASA sends nanotech to Mars

[Centurix]

Which finds 1,150,000 year old nanotech already there, gets eaten, turned into Martian nanotech electro-waste...

Re:NASA sends nanotech to Mars

[0racle]

No no no I saw this happen once. See after living on Mars once this nanoswarm makes the atmosphere livable you'll begin to have people that can travel through time and space.

Re:Let me give you some statistics...

[Leeji]

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:

Entry Excerpts Link Wrapper Self-written
Nanotech Swarms 2280 910 670
Nano-Probes 2185 767 1053
Toilets 1206 787 1006

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.

Wrong destination

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Mars:

1. Rocks

Titan

1. Lakes and rivers
2. Clouds and real weather
3. Water spouting volcanoes
4. Complex organic compounds
5. Giant ringed planet in the sky (at least on a clear day, if they ever happen???)

Need I say more?

Re:Wrong destination

[zeux]

Come on, you said it yourself: Mars rocks!

So let's go to Mars.

New problem...

[daijo78]

Forget viruses/bugs, how about cancer? Say these things should build an antenna but a few of them go crazy.

Honestly.

[surfcow]

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.

What they eventually want to achieve

[ta bu shi da yu]

The Borg. Yow!

Greasemonkey to the rescue!

[Osty]

Wish there was a way to mark Roland articles so we could omit them and deny him his precious ad revenue.

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.

Let's see, builders, blockers, bashers, bombers...

[beyond_the_blue]

"...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?

I for one ...

[S3D]

I for one welcome our new Roland Piquepaille overlords !

Re:WOW!!!

[salec]

You CAN arrange them (command them to arrange themselves) into planar sheets, or any other structure type.

It is almost like magic: submicroscopic gadgets lie around in dirt, unseen, then when you hit the remote, a metal construction begins to emerge, slowly though, but if they are programmed to recursively build larger and larger mechnical manipulators as needed, then speed of construction rises toward the end...Besides, constructions made out of minute and inteligent identical parts may "self-cure" (gracefuly degrade, by rearrangement) if damaged!

At first glance, future developing efficent procedures for building macroscopic technical systems of nanobots seems like a very big new area of interdisciplinary engineering expertise - something like a cross between programming, architecture, mechanical engineering and organisational/management sciences, perhaps chemistry and biology, too. Before we have that idea tools in our pocket, nanobots for themself don't mean much, but we will need them (or at least a software to simulate them in 3D) to practice and develop new skills. This may prove to be the ultimate engineering method, one for everything, real Santa Claus machine(...-let, a swarm of them, that is), held back only by its cost.

Re:Whoa!

[mwood]

Not all of /. Like just about any other subset of society it has settled out into technophile and technophobe camps. And I think that both sides are a sad development. Treating engineering and technology as religion rather than, well, engineering and technology is not helpful.