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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!"
The microrobot is much smaller as less massive than previous controllable microrobots.
Do you even glance at these before hitting "publish"?
Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
about as wide as a strand of human hair, and half the length of the period at the end of this sentence. About 200 of these could march in a line across the top of a plain M&M.
I wish I had the wit to ridicule this properly. Note the care taken to distinguish between plain or peanut M&Ms...
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Hooray! Now we can have the world's tiniest caterpillar race!
Do the 'editors' ever actually read these submissions anymore?
Dartmouth researchers have developed the world's smallest untethered, controllable microrobot
Let me know when they develop uncontrollable microrobots.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
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.
... therefore it is not "untethered".
Well, I no longer have to worry about such problems. My wife hit menopause fifteen years ago. So we can whoopdeedoo all day long. That is, if I can get my penis erect.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Bill McLellan, the guy who won Feynman's motor challenge would have won sooner but he kept losing his motor in the dust on his workbench.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
And what's the wear-lifetime of a such a small device? And how does a "microrobot" mean that we're "one step closer to a nanorobot"? The article makes no such claim, and such an extraordinary decrease in size--at least factor a billion in terms of volume--is so dramatic it boggles the mind that it was even suggested. Let me give a good idea about the feasibility of "nanorobots": nature has been shrinking critters for /billions/ of years, look to their level of functionality, i.e. what does a bacterium do? what does a virus do? what does a prion do? to get an idea of what "nanorobots" would be capable of.
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.
They brought Microsoft Office Clippey alive!? aaaaaaaah!
Table-ized A.I.