Swarms of Microrobots Over Europe?

Roland Piquepaille writes "In 'Mini robots to undertake major tasks?,' IST Results describes a EU-funded project which allowed to build several kinds of microrobots in the last three years. These robots are very small (about 1.5 cm by 3 cm), have limited on-board intelligence and are wirelessly controlled by a central robot control system. A follow-on project has already started, with an even more ambitious goal: deploy 'real' swarms of up to 1,000 robot clients. Such robot swarms are expected to perform 'a variety of applications, including micro assembly, biological, medical or cleaning tasks.' Read more for additional details, pictures and references about this follow-on project not described by the article mentioned above."

Comments

Robots

[TheMeuge]

In Europe, robots deploy you.

Re:Robots

[moro_666]

actually it's more the way that the robot de-deploys you ... meaning you will be unemployeed if the robots take over everything ...

having automatic stuff around is nice, but to be jobless because of this can't be fun. luckily robots can't make software nor administrate it properly for a while so we're all saved for now.

but you should worry about the future ;) the robots won't kill you, the economy will.

#be afraid of the robots ... very afraid ... cause they're almost as tough as chuck norris ...

Re:Robots

[ducatier]

I forone welcome our tiny building overloards.

Re:Robots

[interiot]

Umm, if the means of production is completely in the hands of robots, there's no reason not to radically restructure the economy and go to something more like socialism, because there's no reason for humans to be forced to consistently generate productive output. Personally, if someone told me I was allowed to spend my whole time studying physics or math or producing silly flash animations, I'd be overjoyed.

Re:Robots

[LainTouko]

And yet, one vision of the future which could very reasonably be described as a worthy goal is a society in which, due to mechanisation, people never have to do work which they (really) do not want to do.

How we could transition into such a world without society crashing and burning, given the economic problems caused by lots of work "going away" is an interesting problem.

Re:Robots

[Anonymous Coward]

In Europe, our tiny building overlords welcome YOU!

Re:Robots

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, the robots are tired and old and don't want to play anymore, all they like to do is sleep in their off hours and have peace of mind from being tortured by the humans...oh wait, I would be one of those humans, but I don't torture people, animals or robots...bye

Re:Robots

[jruesch]

If the means of production is entirely in the hands of the robots what makes you think they will want to produce food and water and housing to keep the silly humans alive that are only producing inefficiencies within the system. Humans would be considered vermin.

Re:Robots

[moro_666]

you're stuck in illusions.

companies that make the robots and companies that use the robots will get all the money and profit. you'll be unemployed and dream about a robot that would you earn enough money to buy a cup of coffee ...

it will take ages before you get this 'common wealth', and i don't want to see zillion workless people around until the companies understand that the money really isn't worth a thing ...

bill gates could probably buy a notebook for every damn developer in the world, but is he doing it ? nope ... so there you go.

Re:Robots

[pnewhook]

Duh, its already happening.

Have you ever tried making bread from scratch the old fashioned way? It was an all day affair. So was laundry and getting the dust out of the house. Machines took over these jobs or vastly reduced the time and effort to do them.

This mechanization has over the last hundred years helped cause a workplace revolution as millions of women now had enough free time to enter the workforce.

These millions of people looking for work didn't cause the destruction of society, but merely caused new types of jobs to be created to accomodate them.

Re:Robots

[Anonymous Coward]

"Have you ever tried making bread from scratch the old fashioned way?"
What do you mean? Making bread from powder? That's really easy...
1) buy powder, yeast, milk, and salt.
2) mix powder, yeast, milk, and salt. Bake in oven for a while.
3) PROFIT!!

Seriosly though, remove item #3, and you have a recipe for making bread the old fasion way. If, however, you consider buying the above stuff as "cheating"... well, then you just have to grow it instead. But wait, that cheating too! To make bread the old fasioned way, you'll have to build your own farm, and chop the wood for the house (in which you'll bake your bread), etc, etc...

Re:Robots

[pnewhook]

You've obviously never made bread.

Re:Robots

[Anonymous Coward]

However, if the progress of technology creates not only cheap robots, but true AI, then one could conceive of a situation in which *no* conceivable occupation exists that could be more cheaply and effectivly fufilled by a human than by a Robot or AI.

In that happens, then no-one will be employable at all, if the laws allow this. The population will be divided into haves, who are supported by Robots and AI's, and have-nots, who didn't have enough money to get the Robots and AI's necessary to support them. It might make sense to give Robot's and AI's to the have-nots, if the haves desire a bigger market for thier extra products, but the transition would probably be rough. The end-result would be a sort of socialism, where everyone controls part of 'the means of production'.

Re:Robots

[macshit]

You've obviously never made bread.

I have -- a few years ago I used to make a several loaves a week (using just flour, water, eggs, yeast/sourdough and salt).

It's (1) utterly simple, and (2) takes about half an hour of real work. There's additional "waiting time" but you can obviously do other things then (this makes it less suitable for lifestyles where your schedule is always highly uncertain ... I'd just do it on saturday or sunday and make sure I stuck around the house for a while).

Your original point is quite valid, but I'm not sure bread-making is a very good illustration of it... :-)

Re:Robots

[radtea]

Personally, if someone told me I was allowed to spend my whole time studying physics or math or producing silly flash animations, I'd be overjoyed

You are in the minority. Most humans are incapable of handling an environment where they are not integrated into some hierarchy that makes them feel both wanted and to some extent powerful. Different social systems are merely different ways of apportioning the wanted/powerful ratio amongst individuals. Totalitarian and free-market systems are based on different sets of rules to concentrate power in the hands of a few, while attempting to make the masses feel either sufficiently wanted or sufficiently hopeful regarding getting a little power for themselves to support the whole ugly mess. Social democratic systems attempt to flatten the power/want distribution so the peaks and valleys are lower (they can easily become totalitarian if they try to rub the peaks and valleys out altogether.)

Greed is not a primary human motivation. Put Bill Gates alone on an island and he won't care about accumulating vast wealth. The accumulation of wealth results in enhanced social status, and that is what every monkey is tuned up to pursue. People are happier when they have more than their neighbours. This is empirical fact. Greed--the endless desire for more wealth--is a consequence of a deeper monkey need for social status.

Most people need hierachy, and in market-based societies, including social democracies, they get that hierarchy from their work environment. So there will be all kinds of opposition to robotic wealth production because it threatens the monkey hierarchies that give our lives meaning.

But there is hope. Capitalism and markets are games we play, shared illusions that allow us to create hierarchies out of nothing, based on the exchange of economic tokens rather than force of arms. Market societies have been successful because they are able to satisfy our need for hierarchy and also produce wealth. The sucessful post-market societies will have other means of creating heirarchies that will look as silly and artificial to us as Bill Gates' means of gaining wealth would look to a medieval warlord.

Re:Robots

[zopf]

There should be a +1 Terrifying option.

Re:Robots

[KDR_11k]

Well, if the robots were programmed to like serving humans and be happy when they make people happy...

Re:Robots

[pnewhook]

Ah, you were taking shortcuts :-) I remember my grandmother and mother making it when I was small. Recipe was easy as you say with simple ingredients. However to make enough for the family for the week a huge batch was made in the laundry tub. Mixing the ingredients, folding it down, then beating it flat as it rose took well over an hour. Then it had to partially rise in a warm room for an hour or two, then had to be beaten back down again (the two risings was key). This dough was then separated into loaves for the oven. Since there were too many loaves to fit in at once, an assembly line of sorts was made of loaves prepped in pans, loaves baking and loaves cooling. Now that took all day.

But I agree, probably not the best example.

Re:Robots

[Murdoc]

What you've just described is Technocracy, which was invented to allow people to enjoy life with machines doing all the unwanted work. In fact, it was even discovered to be necessary after you start relying on machines too much, and that we don't use it is the source of most of our social problems right now.

Actually, micro-bots aren't even needed for this. It's been possible in North America since the 1930's. I just thought you'd want to know.

Re:Robots

[Fred_A]

Well, if this had been in the US, the story would have been along the lines of...

Swarms of Microrobots to be Deployed over Battlefields

Massacre Magazine describes a Pentagon funded project which allowed to build several kinds of microrobots in the last three years. The robots are very small (0.000149129086 furlongs by 0.00298258172 rods) have limited intelligence, a grenade launcher and are controlled by a Republican. A follow-on project has already started, with an even more ambitious goal: deploy 'real' swarms of up to 1,000 robots to oil producing countries and suburbian houses. Such robot swarms are expected to perform 'a variety of applications, including fighting terrorism, identifying illegal file copying, harvesting organs or filling tax forms.'

I don't know which is more terrifying.

Dog Pod Grid?

[Anonymous Coward]

How long until Toner Wars and Dog Pod grids?

Serious question

[Frogbert]

Okay I have a serious question, is there any reason we can't create robots specifically designed to build an exact copy of themselves only half as small? Wouldn't this allow us to have teeny tiny robots in a few months?

Re:Serious question

[Joseph Hardin]

Unfortunately no. While you can build equipment designed to build smaller robots, there are more factors than just size as to whether these things will operate. For instance, you run into physical limits such as the strength to move themselves that have to be worked around , as well as several physics and electrical concerns.

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because practical physical/mechanical behaviours aren't scale-invariant.

Re:Serious question

[kebes]

Well such an idea sounds reasonable enough. In fact in Richard Feynman's "plenty of room at the bottom" famous speech, he describes something similar: building small machines that are then used to build even smaller machines, until finally you have atomic-scale machines. This speech is considered by many to be the "original idea" for nanotechnology.

So why don't we have nanobots yet? Well it turns out its a little more complicated than that. The basic problem is that designs for large-scale robots do not work at smaller scales. You can take macroscopic engineering principles and scale them up or down to a point, but eventually they break down. The design of a 200ft long bridge is not just a 4X scale version of a 50ft bridge, after all.

If you read Drexler's technical book on the subject (Nanosystems) he goes into detail on how various properties (strength, elasticity, conductivity) scale down to the nano realm. Some of them scale favorably, whereas others do not. Thus nano-scale robots will not merely be "small versions" of macro robots. For instance the viscosity of a liquid becomes much more important than gravity, at small scales (whereas at large scales dealing with inertia and gravity are important).

My point is that robots cannot simply build exact (but smaller) copies of themselves. The half-sized robots will be useless within a generation or two, and will require new designs, optimized for that size. (Added to that, robot designs that are self-replicating are not trivial to begin with, at any size-scale!)

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a JOKE, you DUMB ASS.

Re:Serious question

[v1]

A lot of things don't scale well. For example, if you have a bearing wtih a very small tolerance to roll around in, if you shrink the entire thing down to say, 50% its size, the bearing will sieze because the gap is not large enough to allow the grease molicules to move around anymore. You can't shrink the grease molicules so they don't fit right anymore.

Electrical insulators are a certain thickness to protect against arcing of a certain voltage. If you cut the thickness of an insulator in half and don't cut the voltage in half, the insulator will likely be compromised by the voltage and you'll get a short or an arc.

Certain effects, such as viscosity and magnetism, don't change linearly with change in distance. When two magnets get twice as close as they used to be, the attractive/repulsive forces are now four times as great. Since you've probably also just cut your structure thicknesses in half, they are now much weaker, and the magnets being stronger produces an exponentally rising imbalance. In the end the magnets will deform your construction.

When mechanical devices get very small, they also encounter new hazards you take for granted. A grain of sand in a gas tank isn't a big deal, until the gas tank has shrunk to 1cc. Minor vibration or mechanical shock becomes more dangerous in some respects, and becomes nonexistent in others. Parts that are designed to float with eachother will stick since they are not receiving the benefitial effects of vibrations normally present.

Combustion and other important chemical and physical reactions work very differently at larger and smaller scales.

Other factors also cause problems at small scales. Capilary effect, static attraction, surface tension, it's a whole new world when you get really small, especially when any liquids are involved. I think that's why we have physics, astrophysics, and quantum physics... the rules change when you radically alter size.

So there are actually a lot of things to consider when trying to shrink something. It's not just a matter of making all the parts smaller.

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

It's there www.reprap.org

Re:Serious question

[qzulla]

They do this in Bug Park by J.P. Hogan.

Good book, btw.

qz

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Try making a FUNNY joke NEXT TIME.

Re:Serious question

[AaronLawrence]

Has anyone even made a robot that can build a replica of itself, by itself?

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wow. You are a fucking moron

Re:Serious question

[LiquidCoooled]

With all these problems wouldn't you assume to build something truly simple.
ie, if you can get away with a vibrating beam rather than a rotational motor then do so.

Remember to build your robots using assembler language rather than visual basic.

Re:Serious question

[LiquidCoooled]

Additional to this, in the encoding principles, introduce genetic coding.
Allow a percentage of robots to die off because their tolerences were out of bounds, the rest will thrive and build the next generation.

It is survival of the fittest.

Re:Serious question

[Squalish]

An easy way to accomplish spectacular feats of self-engineering.

Also an easy way to end the world in the grey-goo method.

Read Micheal Chrichton's Prey - I'm sure there are better books out there about the topic, but I can't think of any off the topic of my head, and at least it gets across the point that evolution into macro-organisms is impossible to control totally on something nanoscale - though it may be in the designers' interest.

Grey Goo is the new Nuclear Annihilation, and I'm of the opinion that it's far more likely to wipe out the entire human race, rather than most of the population. It has its problems (see Jaron Lanier for a dissent), but given self-evolution of a low enough codestructure, combined with unknown biological elements, they may be possible to overcome.

Re:Serious question

[Squalish]

Ironically, the partial fix for a localized grey goo outbreak is an EMP pulse or ten caused by nukes detonated in the ionosphere

Re:Serious question

[v1]

I agree, in many cases when you shrink something you can simplify the design. But the point is, you have to change the design. That's not something that's easy to program into a self replicating computer. And when it down-sizes itself, does it simplify its brain too? It has to get smaller as well if the whole thing is to shrink. It gets harder to stay smart when you shrink your brain. ;)

Re:Serious question

[arrrrg]

Given what raw materials? If you could build a robot that could build a replica of itself from anything, you'd have to be damn careful they didn't replace you and the rest of the world with copies of themselves (search for "gray dust"). And yes, someone has constructed a self-replicating fabricator, although it needs some help in the form of assembly, screws, bushings, etc. See here.

Re:Serious question

[Plunky]

Well such an idea sounds reasonable enough. In fact in Richard Feynman's "plenty of room at the bottom" famous speech, he describes something similar: building small machines that are then used to build even smaller machines, until finally you have atomic-scale machines. This speech is considered by many to be the "original idea" for nanotechnology.

Although, I wonder if he ever read Waldo & Magic, Inc by Robert A Heinlein which was written in 1940. Its been a few years since I read it, but I'm sure that he had remote mechanical hands (waldos) that made smaller ones, which made smaller, which made smaller. Though, I dont think he ever got to atomic scale.

In fact, it wont work for other reasons not least of which is that when you get to atomic scale the forces you are dealing with change dramatically and different things are important.

Re:Serious question

[Clifton Beach]

Sure - given the right building blocks. See http://ccsl.mae.cornell.edu/research/selfrep/

Re:Serious question

[KDR_11k]

That depends on whether those nanostructures are even affected by an EMP. And even if, microwave bombs are cheaper and less dangerous for that purpose.

Using extreme heat (nothing withstands the temperatures of a fusion bomb) would be fairly effective at wiping out nanostructures as would certain types of radiation (though those have to be adjusted to the nanostructure) or chemicals. Not every weakness could be evolved away easily and perfect protection will probably be impossible. What UV radiation doesn't destroy maybe acid will. At such a small scale many chemicals become threats. And it's pretty likely that the nanostructures would require suspension in liquid to even move.

Re:Serious question

[Bazzalisk]

Givem the right building blocks.

Unfortunately it'll still get it wrong occasionaly, and succesive generatiions will be progressively less capable than the previous ones - which is the main reason that "grey goo" is pretty unlikely.

Now, there is a way of building a device that can self-replicate using only very comonly available materials, can error-correct so that few errors in replication occur, and those that do don't cause the device to become totaly non-functional, but rather just make it behave slightly differently. That method, of course, is to build your device out of DNA, RNA, and proteins.

Re:Serious question

[chris_eineke]

*dons flame-retardant suit*

The Republican Party?

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm.. Can we not build these necessary variations into the algorithm? as the generations increment, design changes are introduced appropriately as part of the program.

I really can't stand all thoughtless, nitpicky bitching that goes on around here. The cost of entry should be offering a solution, not mindless critical babble.

(this is a note to the children of this parent, apply elsewhere as needed)

Re:Serious question

[thrillseeker]

it wont work for other reasons not least of which is that when you get to atomic scale the forces you are dealing with change dramatically and different things are important.

So I should believe some guy with a slashdot user number nearing the one million mark who poopoos the idea over the guy who in his mid-20's worked on the atomic bomb and who was sought out by Bohr to chat over difficult Physics concepts about what is and isn't possible and says that this is possible?

Re:Serious question

[Plunky]

So I should believe some guy with a slashdot user number nearing the one million mark who poopoos the idea over the guy who in his mid-20's worked on the atomic bomb and who was sought out by Bohr to chat over difficult Physics concepts about what is and isn't possible and says that this is possible?

well, Feynman is dead and the world moves on.. :)

In fact I'm not saying that nanomachines per se are not possible, just that to make a machine that makes itself at smaller scale and set off the chain wont work. Even when you get to micromachine scale the relative magnitudes of the forces involved change dramatically and you need to redesign the machine.

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here.

This is Slashdot.

Most people here are more likely to bring about the end of civilisation as we know it by creating grey goo (or dust, as some called it) than to spread their DNA. And they would probably have more fun doing the former, too :)

(And no, the stuff that gathers in the CPU fan does not count as an advance towards nano-technological world domination although it IS grey dust, technically).

I, for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

welcome our new mini robot overlords. Sorry, had to post to AC to avoid a public lynching.

Re:I, for one...

[Jugalator]

You must be new here. On Slashdot, you get modded +5 Funny for pulling these jokes!

Re:I, for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, jokes mod you.

What happens when...

[Anonymous Coward]

these robots become self-aware and try to take over the world?

Imagine thousands small, spider like robots invading your house throught ventilation shafts, sewers, etc. while you are sleeping.

Re:What happens when...

[RedLaggedTeut]

these robots become self-aware and try to take over the world?

They already did, and you did not notice.

Re:What happens when...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Imagine thousands small, spider like robots invading your house throught ventilation shafts, sewers, etc. while you are sleeping."

It's not all bad. Imagine Tom Cruise crashing through your window and asking to borrow your bath tub!

Re:What happens when...

[Anonymous Coward]

i imagine this often...

*zip*

Re:What happens when...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's hard to believe at times...

But Slashdot isn't the entire world.

Re:What happens when...

[KDR_11k]

Self-aware does not mean they have a desire to take over the world. What if they became self aware and decided they want to make pop music?

Re:What happens when...

[Billnvd65]

Well, for one, it would probably be better than the crap we get now!

Two, I think you have just redefined "Techno!"

Sounds Familiar...

[HateBreeder]

Replicators, anyone?

Re:Sounds Familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or how about when Magnum PI had to fight killer robots?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088024/

Re:Sounds Familiar...

[MindKata]

More like mini Borg. "Resistance is futile ... or it would be, if I could reach up to assimilate your foot".

Re:Sounds Familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, if they're that small, the entire robot battle fleet could be swallowed by a small dog. Scientists say this sort of thing happens all the time.

Re:Sounds Familiar...

[SnowZero]

I really liked that movie when I was growing up. It's probably one of the factors that led me to pursue robotics in college. Much of the "tech" is off-base, but I thought it was interesting how they looked at the effects on society.

Re:Sounds Familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the Mantrid drones from Lexx. They kept replicating until they consumed 64% of the entire universe and caused a Big Crunch.

Crunch

[Anonymous Coward]

"or cleaning tasks."
Where's that little bugger cleaning? *crunch*

Size matters.

[imunfair]

The article says they're 3cm x 1.5cm, yet the image shows robots the size of red blood cells. Someone is an idiot, I hope the image wasn't provided by the people making these things, because I personally don't want swarms of defective robots flying around trying to pollinate my eyes or something like that.

Just imagine riding along at 50mph on a motorcycle and swallowing a flying microrobot - sounds painful. (The article doesn't really say if they move by air - but swarm makes me think of flying bugs.)

Re:Size matters.

[ettlz]

The articles give confused messages on the size of these things. One minute they're of order a few centimetres; the next, they're injecting liquid into biological cells; following that, lined up next to a ruler measuring a few millimetres.

Just how ruddy big are these things?!

Re:Size matters.

[v1]

when you hear 'swarm', think of a carpet of ants streaming across your driveway.

Re:Size matters.

[serutan]

When you consider power supply requirements, maneuverability, size-to-weight ratio and other factors, I think 1.5 x 3 cm is about the minimum size required to look for Sarah Connor.

Re:Size matters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too many artists have seen Inner Space. Unfortunately I have also.

Re:Size matters.

[Jesus_666]

No, European blood cells are about 3cm x 1.5cm. That's also why if you're an American in Europe and you need a blood transfusion you need to use an adapter.

Re:Size matters.

[Dr. GeneMachine]

No, European blood cells are about 3cm x 1.5cm. That's also why if you're an American in Europe and you need a blood transfusion you need to use an adapter.

Obviously the intelligent designer screwed up in a imperial-to-metric measurement conversion at some point...

With Open Arms!

[Shanesan]

I for one welcome our micro-robot masters.

Scared Me for a Second There

[Comatose51]

I was doing a search on my Google personalized homepage that has a RSS feed from Slashdot. For a second there, I read "Swarms of Microsofts Over Europe". Whew!

What is this bullshit?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times are you going to try to trick /. readers into going to this asshole's blog?

I'd rather put up with the poor comments at Digg than read this garbage any longer.

Goodbye.

One question??

[eclectro]

These robots are very small (about 1.5 cm by 3 cm), have limited on-board intelligence

Why are they going to have "limited on-board intelligence" when they could be running Linux??

Re:One question??

[MindKata]

They could also try using Windows but it would end up the size of a car. :)

Re:One question??

[Bizzeh]

they would need limited intelligence to want to run linux

Re:One question??

[Anonymous Coward]

They are running linux, thus the "limited on-board intelligence"

Swarms of Microbots

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of Crichton's book "Prey".

Just don't take any pictures

[iminplaya]

We all still remember what happened in Itchy and Scratchy Land...

Re:Just don't take any pictures

[meznak]

Actually, the camera flashes turned out to be the only way to stop the robot army...

Ahh, I get it.

[Limburgher]

Then, they'll expand this program, and give them weapons, and have droid control ships, and then this kid'll fly inside one and accidentaly blow it up, and he'll be a hero. . .

Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Roland Piquepaille and Slashdot: Is there a connection?

I think most of you are aware of the controversy surrounding regular Slashdot article submitter Roland Piquepaille. For those of you who don't know, please allow me to bring forth all the facts. Roland Piquepaille has an online journal (I refuse to use the word "blog") located at www.primidi.com [primidi.com]. It is titled "Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends". It consists almost entirely of content, both text and pictures, taken from reputable news websites and online technical journals. He does give credit to the other websites, but it wasn't always so. Only after many complaints were raised by the Slashdot readership did he start giving credit where credit was due. However, this is not what the controversy is about.

Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends serves online advertisements through a service called Blogads, located at www.blogads.com. Blogads is not your traditional online advertiser; rather than base payments on click-throughs, Blogads pays a flat fee based on the level of traffic your online journal generates. This way Blogads can guarantee that an advertisement on a particular online journal will reach a particular number of users. So advertisements on high traffic online journals are appropriately more expensive to buy, but the advertisement is guaranteed to be seen by a large amount of people. This, in turn, encourages people like Roland Piquepaille to try their best to increase traffic to their journals in order to increase the going rates for advertisements on their web pages. But advertisers do have some flexibility. Blogads serves two classes of advertisements. The premium ad space that is seen at the top of the web page by all viewers is reserved for "Special Advertisers"; it holds only one advertisement. The secondary ad space is located near the bottom half of the page, so that the user must scroll down the window to see it. This space can contain up to four advertisements and is reserved for regular advertisers, or just "Advertisers". Visit Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends (www.primidi.com [primidi.com]) to see it for yourself.

Before we talk about money, let's talk about the service that Roland Piquepaille provides in his journal. He goes out and looks for interesting articles about new and emerging technologies. He provides a very brief overview of the articles, then copies a few choice paragraphs and the occasional picture from each article and puts them up on his web page. Finally, he adds a minimal amount of original content between the copied-and-pasted text in an effort to make the journal entry coherent and appear to add value to the original articles. Nothing more, nothing less.

Now let's talk about money. Visit http://www.blogads.com/order_html?adstrip_category =tech&politics= to check the following facts for yourself. As of today, December XX 2004, the going rate for the premium advertisement space on Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends is $375 for one month. One of the four standard advertisements costs $150 for one month. So, the maximum advertising space brings in $375 x 1 + $150 x 4 = $975 for one month. Obviously not all $975 will go directly to Roland Piquepaille, as Blogads gets a portion of that as a service fee, but he will receive the majority of it. According to the FAQ [blogads.com], Blogads takes 20%. So Roland Piquepaille gets 80% of $975, a maximum of $780 each month. www.primidi.com is hosted by clara.net (look it up at http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index. jhtml). Browsing clara.net's hosting solutions, the most expensive hosting service is their Clarahost Advanced (http://www.uk.clara.net/clarahost/advanced.php) priced at £69.99 GBP. This is roughly, at the time of this wri

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[mtenhagen]

Stop whining,

You dont have to read the articles.

I have a link in my sig with a discount coupon if you use it I earn a few dollars and you save 90. Who cares? If you dont like it go somewhere else are disable sigs.

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up. We've all heard it. The post has links outside of his blog. Where is the problem if he is bringing us good news?

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[PatTheGreat]

I would have to agree that Roland probably bothers to post on Slashdot in order to get traffic for his site. But it's not like he's posting crap. As you said, the articles he posts are interesting and relevant. Without him, they probably would not have shown up on Slashdot, and you wouldn't get access to these interesting and relevant articles. Sure, Roland makes some money off of it. But it's not like he's living the high life off the hard work of Slashdotters. He gets a couple of hundred dollars a month doing stuff that you could do too. He provides a service. Sure, he may get paid a lot for not so much work, but that just shows he's smart enough to pull it off. And all it costs you is an extra click. Why bother complaining?

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[Overly Critical Guy]

And you don't have to read my posts.

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Roland Piquepaille and Slashdot: Is there a connection?

Add Google, Apple, Linus Torvalds, Zonk and IBM and we got members of the evil Illuminati that runs our lives here at Slashdot.

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[midnighttoadstool]

You have written so much it has set my crack-pot radar all a-buzz.

Blow me down, and knock me over with a feather, but if I'm right this guy is providing an intelligent aggregation of information, unlike RSS, and making some sort of living while he's at it. Obviously he's a terrorist. Don't visit his web site; you might get blown up.

So what if he's plagiarising; we aren't talking about the Washington Post here, or the New York Nonsense. If the guy means to be taken seriously, rather than just making a living, then fine: there is a case to answer.

Otherwise his service is quite valuable: he is acting as an intelligent filter of all the articles out there, and further he is promoting particular articles to sites (such as /.) that he has established may be interested. He is only a side-step away from being a slashdot employee. The fact that he is an 'intelligent' filter is demonstrated by his success with slashdot.

Long may he make money.

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[welcher]

Why the hell are people modding this up? The submitter is not the story - and the parent is just a cut and paste anyhow.

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[Xiroth]

Uh, perhaps you should have checked this particular article before you copy and pasted this rant - the only place he links his blog is his name-link; the others are legit publications. I'd have said that linking to blogs are just about exactly what name-links are for.

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Is this "service" worth up to $647 a month?

Even if he's living in his Mom's basement, nobody can live on $647 a month. That's below federal poverty lines. So this has to be a hobby, or he's in high school. It's hard to get worked up over a max of $7764 a year - that's probably not worth his time to write the blog. Maybe he's just bad at math. If he is in high school, good for him for trying to make a blog, even if he's made some bad judgements on source attributions during his freshman year. I have no need for yet-another mindless link propagation blog, but is he hurting anybody?

As for his submissions, the page you link says:
(Rejected submissions are not listed.)

Oh, and if you're going to post a canned comment you wrote in December, at least update it with February statistics.

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[JourneyExpertApe]

"The real question is, why does Slashdot continue to accept every single one of his submissions when many of the readers see through the scam and whole-heartedly object to what he is doing?"

CmdrTaco addressed this in an article a couple months ago (as I recall). He mentioned that some people will submit multiple articles per day. Now if Mr. Piquapackofpickledpeppers is only getting between 4 and 10 submissions accepted each month, I doubt anywhere near all of his submissions are accepted. Taco also said that in many cases, posted stories are only submitted by one person, so they don't have more than one to choose from. It is in /.'s interest to give credit to the submitters to encourage them to keep submitting interesting articles. Without submitters, /. would not exist in its present form.

"Is this 'service' worth up to $647 a month?"

How much do you think Slashdot makes from advertising each month. I guarantee you it's more than 10 times that much. Now tell me what Slashdot does that that Piquachu guy doesn't. Would I be wrong in saying that you're a little bit jealous that his blog (I refuse to say "online journal") is generating a little money and yours isn't?

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only you would realize there are other countries besides america, and that the vast majority of them are poor countries where 650 dollars a month would be an excellent income.

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[woolio]

An electrical engineer with a PhD degree, conducting research at a world-renown university in India will make less than $674/month.

Is he hurting anybody? Well, how would you feel if you were a real journalist and some punk was copying your words -- your hard work -- without attribution and getting paid for it? Journalists aren't exactly on the same pay scale as American lawyers...

And do you think this guy is paying taxes? Or even reporting to the IRS? Even at $8000k/year, THEY would care.

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[1u3hr]

the only place he links his blog is his name-link; the others are legit publications.

No; the "additional details" link is another of his blogs. And whereas Slashdot adds a "nofollow" to the submitter's link, (to discourage link spamming), it does not to ones in the story. And his "additional details" are either copied from the prinmary souce, or found by a cursory Google search.

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[bill_mcgonigle]

What does that have to do with the topic at hand? This guy is in Paris.

Re:Roland and Slashdot--is there a connection?

[bill_mcgonigle]

An electrical engineer with a PhD degree, conducting research at a world-renown university in India will make less than $674/month.

I think it's closer to $2000/mo, but the question of 'is he hurting anybody' depends entirely on your philosophy on the role of central government as a social safety net. If you accept that millions of people in India go without clean water and electricity and don't think that's New Dehli's responsibility, then no he's not hurting anybody. If you think India can compete so effectively in the world market because its national tax burden is so low at the expense at the poor, then yes he is.

Well, how would you feel if you were a real journalist and some punk was copying your words -- your hard work -- without attribution and getting paid for it? Journalists aren't exactly on the same pay scale as American lawyers...

Didn't the great-grandparent poster say he's doing proper attribution? Is your point that his excerpts go beyond the scope of fair use? I have no idea, I don't read his column. Was the purpose of the great-grandparent post to suggest that his blog is damaging to journalists? I suspect ZDNet woudln't host it if that was the case, but regardless I thought the point was that there was great conspiracy with the Slashdot staff.

And do you think this guy is paying taxes? Or even reporting to the IRS? Even at $8000k/year, THEY would care.

I clicked over to TFA, and it says he's in Paris. So I doubt he reports to the IRS but being heavily socialized, I'm sure the relevant agency in France takes their chunk of his income.

Self-organizing networks

[jheath314]

As a proof of concept, they meant well, but started off down the wrong path by having these things centrally controlled.

Central control will work for a few hundred machines, maybe even a few thousand, but you'll run into major bottlenecking issues when you've got these things small enough to use clouds of millions or billions. Moreover, central control requires needlessly high bandwidth, when you have a single decision-maker in charge of things which could more easily be handled at the local level. Think about how well your company would work if you had to route every single decision through the CEO, no matter how trivial the matter may be.

The challenge of networks is to get rid of the central controller which still achieving controlled behavior. Distributed control through self-organizing networks is a certainly difficult, but it's the only way to fly.

Re:Self-organizing networks

[gears5665]

solution:

whenever the swarm reaches a certain number the central computer orders them to build another central computer which will build and control its own swarm.

Depending on the task assigned to the swarm from the central computer, the swarm could build a set of subswarms first equal to the number of tasks and then the group of central computers could 'decide' which sub-swarm handles which piece.

After all, they won't be THAT independent. They will have a set of tasks that they are capable of doing and intelligent direction at the highest level.

Re:Self-organizing networks

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent +1 interesting or whatever

Re:Self-organizing networks

[MindKata]

I agree with you, although they could reduce the bandwidth problem depending on how higher level commands they are sending out from the central command.

Plus these robots have IR comms on them, so in theory they could be made to communicate with each other.

Re:Self-organizing networks

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people (myself included) are working on this kind of problem. There is a lot of literature on decentralized systems, for example in sensor networks, game theory, etc. You can get better performance by organizing systems through a centralized controller, but the overhead costs add up. The challenge is to quantify these two aspects and trade them off to get a good "balanced" system that is cooperative but where each component is intelligent.

I For One...

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new robot swarm overlords...

Netcraft confirms it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Al Gore invented microrobots.

So... what are they doing?

[FlopEJoe]

I RTFA but still ain't clear what they're doing or how it's better than current ways:

[...] first was a medical or biological application, in which the robot was handling biological cells, injecting liquid into them [...] second scenario was micro-assembly, in which the robot soldered tiny parts. The final scenario looked at atomic force, with the robot mounting atomic force and doing experiments on it."

Were the bots in a body and injecting cells? Did they solder parts that we can't do with normal chip manufacture? And I don't even want to know what a robot is doing mounting an atomic force but I'm sure there'll be a newsgroup dedicated to it soon enough. alt.binaries.robots-mounting-atomic-force or something.

don't worry

[Anonymous Coward]

EU projects rarely have usable scientific or practical results.

hmmn

[Bizzeh]

how do you stop people from steeling them?

Re:hmmn

[Anonymous Coward]

Magnets.

Re:hmmn

[Anonymous Coward]

With a protective teflon layer. That won't stop people from ironing them, though.

Re:hmmn

[Anonymous Coward]

by far the most inteligent comment of the day, really makes you think

Roland Piquepaille

[Anonymous Coward]

their first task should be to seek and destroy Roland Piquepaille, 2 bit plaigairist extraordinaire

Two questions:

[tedpearson]

Do they run linux? How about a beowulf cluster of these?

3 words

[GroinSniper]

Michael Crichton's Prey

Re:3 words

[TangoCharlie]

I was looking for the post that mentioned that book... Because that my first thought. I've read the book... it's a good read.... well, no, it's typical Crichton crap... but I did enjoy it! Better than David Gibbins' Atlantis which I'm reading at the moment!

Back to robots. TFA seems a little confused with dimenions, and I know they're no-where near close (yet), but I really think that anyone planning to make self replicating nano-bot really should read Crichton's book.... :-)

Re:3 words

[jeff_goob]

Stanislaw Lem's Invincible

Ask Albert

[Anonymous Coward]

Albert says...

These robots are very small (about 1.5 cm by 3 cm)

[Brad1138]

"Such robot swarms are expected to perform 'a variety of applications, including micro assembly, biological, MEDICAL or cleaning tasks"

They may be small but it would take a heck of a needle to inject them into your arm. OUCH!

Obligatory Futurama quote

[Twinbee]

My point is that robots cannot simply build exact (but smaller) copies of themselves.

Oh, my, no. That would require extremely tiny atoms, and have you priced those lately? I'm not made of money! [Farnsworth]

Re: that photo

[Anonymous Coward]

The article says they're 3cm x 1.5cm, yet the image shows robots the size of red blood cells.

It may look strange, the matter is susceptible of a ready explanation.

These robots in the picture are being used to treatithe rare disorder Macrocytosis, in which red blood cells become greatly enlarged beyond their usual size.

4 words

[qzulla]

J.P. Hogan Bug Park

qz

Re:4 words

[tokenhillbilly]

Technically, that's two initials and three words.

DDoS

[nick_davison]

These robots ... have limited on-board intelligence and are wirelessly controlled by a central robot control system.

Forget about distributed denial of service attacks. Past studies show that all you need to take them down are a couple of jedi (which, if I recall, Europe's voter registration implies they have thousands of) and a really annoying little kid.

Could it be?

[Psx29]

A real life chibi robo?

Zen and the art of the nano

[Ancient_Hacker]

Here we have an example of perfect Zen:

A postulated swarm of thousands (why not millions?) of:

• Non-existent robots.
• With non-existent sensors.
• And non-existent manipulators.
• And non-existent power.
• Moved by non-existent motors.
• Being used to do things nobody needs or wants.

WRTFA Anyway?

[DoninIN]

Seriously, this is slashdot, we're here to read the headline, jump to conclusions, bash microsoft and start the odd flamewar, or occasionally engage in fascinating discussions that equally off topic. So who's clicking on the link anyway? Haven't you realized by now when we all claim that the link is "slashdotted" we mean we didn't click on it and we ain't gonna read the article anyway.

Personally...

[getwhipped]

Personally, I welcome our very small robot overlords.

Re:Personally...

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU FAIL IT!

Please stop modding this garbage up

[jheath314]

Do a google search for the first sentence of the parent post in slashdot. This post has been copy pasted numerous times by a guy who's got an ax to grind against Roland:

I think most of you are aware of the controversy

Here's my advise to the guy with the ax to grind: you've submitted this rant often enough. Go take a huff of lithium and stop bogging down the discussions with OT copy-paste posts. If you don't like Roland's stuff, add him to your filter list.

Here's my advice to everyone else: stop modding this up. This is OFF TOPIC.

Umm Didn't I see this

[future assassin]

in a movie and it didnt turn out too good for us? Robots swarming on my ass is not what I have on my mind when walking in the park

Re:Umm Didn't I see this

[Jesus_666]

I also saw a movie where Earth's core stopped and the resulting hole in the magnetic field caused a space laser to melt the Golden Gate Bridge. Call me disillusioned, but I think that sometimes movies might not depict reality. On the other hand we should probably try not to develop an earthquake weapon, just in case.

Isn't it cool?

[benjamindees]

Don't you want to invest?

Mixed results portrayed as miracle:

[Hartree]

They started off to build 7 robots and have them work collaboratively. They actually built only one.

So, instead of just saying that, they highlight results that say they've shown several things to be possible (that really didn't seem likely to be impossible in the first place, as they are already done with existing micromanipulation systems. Cellular injection is pretty common stuff.), by doing similar things with a robot orders of magnitude larger than the ones they are aiming for.

Then, they announce a follow on project where they really, no, really this time, are going to build swarms of collaborative microbots.

You just have to keep funding us.

Re:Mixed results portrayed as miracle:

[Anonymous Coward]

The other side here is that as a rule, these days you just can't get long-term research funding. If your goal is to create something grand that requires multiple years of development, you have to start with a short project of one or maybe two years, hype up whatever you managed to create in that time, and apply for the next piece of funding. The trick is not to hype your preliminary achievements too much, so that you can represent your follow-up projects as equally successful!

Get a life Roland

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Don't you have anything else to do besides submit stories?

it supports plagarism?

[way2trivial]

that's one reason...

I for one...

[Jeff85]

I, for one, welcome our new Microrobot overlords...

"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you."

Come on, it's not that bad

[Jesus_666]

The summary contains only one link to primidi.com and that is Roland's name. I'm perfectly fine with an RP story where all relevant links point to sites that aren't RP's blog

Re:Come on, it's not that bad

[1u3hr]

The summary contains only one link to primidi.com and that is Roland's name. I'm perfectly fine with an RP story where all relevant links point to sites that aren't RP's blog

Click on the "additional details" link and see where that takes you.

Re:Come on, it's not that bad

[Jesus_666]

Okay, so it's a zdnet blog post by RP but at least it's not his personal blog. It's a step in the right direction. Also, there's still one link that goes somewhere else. Yeah.

Re:Come on, it's not that bad

[1u3hr]

Yes, only two out of three links go to his sites and earn him impressions and Pagerank.

Unchecked Human Greed

[bill_mcgonigle]

if the means of production is completely in the hands of robots, there's no reason not to radically restructure the economy and go to something more like socialism

You also need fusion to do this. And probably room-temperature superconductors and space elevators. All achievable in the 21st century, though.

The trouble will come when governments try to limit people to their share of the wealth. If you have to repress people with violence because their innate greed (bred in by evolution) isn't scalable there's going to be trouble. People are currently limited in their quest for accumulation by their time, smarts, and resources. Given infinite energy and robot armies they can have much much more, but there's not enough to go around, even if we mine the solar system, especially as life spans are greatly extended.

Greed may need to be come a crime. So, one needs to decide if the Star Trek utopia is worth making free will a footnote in the pages of history.

changing times

[Anonymous Coward]

Women always worked, and worked hard. Now they just switched from child caring (which should be the most important "job" out there) and garden tending, household chores, etc to being the same corporate serfs their husbands are, working for the same corporate megalomaniacs, with their kids raised in the government propoganda centers and in lowest common denominator creches. The only thing that is really different now is that for most families they HAVE to have the two incomes to pay off all those corporations for their existence. As little as 30 years ago it wasn't true. (VERY generally speaking). Back then women didn't really have to work outside the important home* unless they wanted to or their kids were grown and out of the house, now it's almost required.

*home defined as that pretty swell place you lived at and liked being at and where your kids and folks were, usually three generations at the same place. The place after a normal 8 to 5 "down to the plant" your time was free. Chances were good it was paid off two generations previously, and there were trees your grampaw planted in the yard, etc. Now it's a crackerbox McMansion crashpad made from glued together particle board with a lot of unpaid off technogadgets and a place for storage of rented furniture and a place where the banks hold a lot of their tangible assets and they allow people temporary occupancy.

Mechanization and automation has helped, but also hurt. It's done both of those things. I can't say exactly where a tip over point is, but as soon as things got to be that the emphasis slipped from you work to live to you live to work things went downhill. Who runs "the machine"? Do we, or do the machines and the machine owners run us? It looks like all that has happened is now throw away humans are the grease that keeps a planetary handful of billionaires lubed up and happy..

Re:changing times

[Ruvim]

Please mod up the parent!

Re:changing times

[KDR_11k]

Who runs "the machine"? Do we, or do the machines and the machine owners run us?

I seem to recall a scene that means this much in Metropolis. The problem is old, as old as civilization. Back when there were kings, counts and whathaveyou that owned all the land and forced the peasants to pay exorbitant rents that barely left anything for the peasants themselves (these masters taking so much that the peasants starve has been a topic in books and plays for millenia now). Then came urbanization and the industrial revolution. The population of the cities had to work all day in factories for a pay that barely allowed them to survive. Coming home from wark they ate dinner and went to bed to prepare for the next exhausting workday, always afraid they might lose their jobs and have no money to survive.

This is where socialism and communism came from, the whole exploitation and live and death at the whim of the land or factory owners. That constant pressure makes people yearn for change, the big factor that holds them back is usually religion which preaches that they will get compensation after death if they remain obedient (so they are promised their change soon).

There are tons of books about that and I think you'll have encountered some of them during your school days. These days we're much better off compared to almost any point in the past, the rich have much less power today than they did during the last five millenia.

Most Awkword Ever

[Chrismith]

Microrobots? That has to be the most awkward word ever. Why didn't they go with the obvious word that simply screams stylish and marketable -- Microbots?

*yawn* wake me up when they exist

[JourneyExpertApe]

We've been hearing about these self-replicating, networked, tiny, flying robots for, what, at least ten years now. I've heard that they will be able to assemble themselves into any form to give us a Star Trek-like holodeck environment. Through their collective intelligence, they will become super-intelligent and demand the same rights as humans. They will eventually enslave us and blah, blah, blah. The fact is, we're so far away from having microbots, much less nanobots, that we shouldn't even be wasting our time worrying about them. I have no problem with research into similar technologies per se, but I don't think we should be letting science fiction writers dictate public policy.

The solution!

[CrazedWalrus]

You can't shrink the grease molicules so they don't fit right anymore.

Didn't Rick Moranis have this covered pretty well? Maybe he should have given that science career more thought before moving on to country music? :-)

i remember these little bots from somewhere...

[esmrg]

After reading the Dune: the battle of corrin,
I am scared shitless.

Obligatory /. comment

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new European microbot overlords!

Oh wait...

Several collaborative robotics projects by the EU

[eMago]

There are several quite new (all founded around 2004) collaborative advanced robotics projects sponsored by the EU:

http://www.cogniron.org/ and http://www.neurobotics.info/ are probably the most interesting and better organized than the mentioned http://www.i-swarm.org/.

Of course that single-digit project founding is just a droplet in the ocean as it would need an apollo program to make profound progress. On the other hand, society has rarely focused its resources on the important and promising technologies and preferred to waste it at other places.

+5 funny

[Anonymous Coward]

oh, if i had the mod points... seriously, does no one else recognize Adams around here?

Everybody! Do the robot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Intergalactic, planetary, planetary, intergalactic...

Open-source software of the MiCRoN project

[janwedekind]

I've both participated in the MINIMAN- and the MiCRoN-project.

Micro-manipulation in our days is either done with an expensive customized systems (chip-manufacturement) or manually (cell-manipulation). The aim of micro-robotic projects is to bring automation to the micro-scale.

At the end of the MiCRoN project at least 3 robots where build and fully assembled. For example there is a list of robots, which were build in the MINIMAN-project already. Only 2 of them were used for the final demonstration. Many prototypes had to be build and discarded, before the design was completed.

It is true, that PCB-soldering is fully automated, but this is done with highly customized systems. On the macro-scale even the industry is interested in making assembly lines more flexible. It is also true, that cell-manipulation has become a common task in research and industry. But it is rarely done in an automated way. If a project requires injecting 10000 cells with a fluid, most probably the project will be dropped.

When researchers are operating a scanning electron microscope, they regularly have to break the vacuum to do a very simple manipulation. A microrobot in the vacuum chamber can save a lot of time here.

The MiCRoN public report has not yet been released. However the MINIMAN-report is here and we have published a lot of pictures and demonstration-videos on our MMVLWiki.

Note, that most of the control- and computer-vision-software is running under Linux. The real-time computer-vision library called Mimas and the computer-vision software of the MiCRoN project is available for free under the terms of the GNU license.

That's not Zen

[Flying pig]

That's Maya (illusion.) Zen is about here and now. Now instead show me something real about Zen, or thirty blows for you!

And the project ended last year

[Animats]

This project ran from 2002 to 2005. It's over.

Roland the Plogger strikes again.

A new bill of rights is going to be necessary

[Anonymous Coward]

...to guarantee that humans will not be touched/manipulated/fondled/spindled/etc by any micro or nano robot. We are building technologies that are going to trump the old protections if we aren't careful.

*yawn* wake me up when...

[Anonymous Coward]

... you RTFA.

Not only do some of these microbots exist, they have pictures of them performing tasks.

Evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

If I've learned anything from movies and TV, these micro-robots will soon evolve and overthrow their human overlords.

In fact, I dont even know why I'm still working on The Personality Forge (personalityforge.com). The chat bots will probably evolve faster without my help! However, I'm hedging my bets by trying to remain on their good side.

Microrobot overlords

[pentium69]

I for one welcome our new Microrobot overlords