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Microrobot Developed at Dartmouth
TheSync writes "Dartmouth researchers have developed the world's smallest untethered, controllable microrobot. The microrobot is much smaller and less massive than previous controllable microrobots. It measures only 60 by 250 micrometers. It receives power and control signals from the grid of electrodes it walks on, and moves by bending its body like a caterpillar. Not quite nanomachines, but we are getting closer!"
It's a waldo. A robot is independent; a robot makes its own decisions, whether based on the environment or anything the programmers dreamed up. This device is "teleoperated", as the builders say. The word for such a thing is waldo, not robot.
Perhaps they should use a grammar checker as per that previous article.
For the braindead morons who don't see the problem here, it's the word as .
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
If you would pass 8th grade English, you'd see that the submitter wrote "much smaller as less massive". Original poster wasn't complaining about the "microrobot" thing.
OK - They are 60 x 250 micrometers or .000060 x .000250 meters, so you get 66,666,666.66 of them per m^2. If you include the entire playing field (w/ end zones) an NFL football field is 360 ft. x 160 ft. or 57,600 ft^2 or ~5,351.215 m^2. So there are (if I haven't messed anything up!) ~356,747,673,600 (I carried the calculations at full precision and rounded the result, so your results might not be exactly the same as mine). I leave it as an exercise for the reader to calculate the number required for other sizes of fields.
"so even though there's no literal tether"
"the robot functions for all practical purposes as if it were tethered"
Even with weasel words you're wrong.
There's no tether at all. These robots could walk circles around a post forever and never get tangled up or run out of line. They could walk onto a grid-equipped train, ride to Cucamonga and continue their mission. If one of them fell off a cliff, you would have to climb down to retrieve it because there's NO TETHER.