Swarm Robot Immune System?

schliz writes "Researchers are investigating large swarms of up to 10,000 miniature robots which can work together to form a single, artificial life form. A resulting artificial immune system is expected to be able to detect faults and make recommendations to a high-level control system about corrective action — much like how a person's natural immune system is able to cope with unfamiliar pathogens."

Comments

Don't they know they are unstoppable?

[LiquidCoooled]

With 10,000 drones they could conquer the world.
We have seen it in many things, and it won't end well.

Stargate Replicators,
Star Trek Borg,
hell even Lexx Mantrid arms!

Re:Don't they know they are unstoppable?

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Probably not. Look up Genetic Algorithms. Although they are an exercise in computer science, the boost in performance during a crossover operation is high enough to suspect that 'junk DNA' is enough to keep many individuals on the path to breeding.

That being said, you cannot rule out that it used to code for stuff, and that it is one mutation away from coming back into play (if you move around the 'start' and 'stop' within a genome, you can reintroduce what was previously 'junk' DNA). However, it is also likely that that DNA is no longer intact because it has not been evaluated for fitness recently (not being part of an individual means that individuals with 'bad' genes in this area can still effectively reproduce).

Re:Don't they know they are unstoppable?

[txoof]

What facility does this unstoppable robot force have for creating more of its self? Did you read the article? Even a quick skimming mentions using swarm technology to solve problems, not to replicate. Just because there are thousands of problem solving robots doesn't imply that they will suddenly decide to begin to evolve and replicate.

Solving problems en mass is one thing, spontaneously developing the ability to replicate is completely another. Even if a snake robot swarm, unleashed into a collapsed building to find and help survivors, spontaneously decided to start replicating, where would it find the materials to do so? I'm pretty sure most collapsed buildings are short on snake robot parts.

This idea is related to Rodney Brooks "Fast Cheap and Out of Control" idea. Instead of having one super expensive robot that symbolically processes the world around it and then interacts with it, you have thousands of fast, cheap and barely controlled robots that do the same task as one big by working together and each supplying one small piece of functionality such as sensing, moving or manipulating. Nothing about this implies that they will suddenly begin to replicate.

If, at some point in the future, we develop the ability build robots that can use raw materials to create more of themselves, unleashing thousands of them with no direct control mechanism would probably be a bad idea. Until then, there's not much to worry about unless you work for FOX news and need a SCARY and SENSATIONAL headline for the hour.

Re:Don't they know they are unstoppable?

[zeromorph]

Although the parent post is quite cheesy the analogy is has a true core:

If you want to stop something flexible and adaptive the means has to be adaptive to.

That holds true for HIV and anti-AIDS medicine and it would hold true for a swarm of robots. You would either have to get them by one hit or take a swarm-like or a viral approach. Quite interesting task actually.

Re:Skynet...obligatory

[dvice_null]

Forget skynet. These things are replicators. Not even the Asgards can beat them without the help of 4 humans.