Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.)
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.
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.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Has anyone even made a robot that can build a replica of itself, by itself?
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke