Slashdot Mirror
Dancing Micro-Robots Waltz on a Pin's Head
coondoggie writes to mention that Duke University researchers have created micro-robots and made them dance to their tune. With dimensions measured in microns, these tiny bots were made to waltz to the music of Strauss on the head of a pin just one millimeter across. "In another sequence, the devices pivot in a precise fashion whenever their boom-like steering arms are drawn down to the surface by an electric charge. This response resembles the way dirt bikers turn by extending a boot heel, researchers said. The researchers said they have also been able to get five of the devices to group-maneuver in cooperation under the same control system.Known as microelectromechanical system (MEMS) microrobots, the devices are of suitable scale for Lilliputian tasks such as moving around the interiors of laboratories-on-a-chip."
The researchers just have to call these micro robots "angels". That then will finally answer the age-old question.
They're too small, relative to the wavelength, to hear. So how can they be dancing to it ?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
So when the grey goo comes I'll finally be able to get a dance partner? Woo!
I wonder if it puts out on the first date..
http://twitter.com/onion2k
So how many micro robots can dance on the head of a pin?
They simply twirled to the music. Waltzing is has a 1-2-3-pause beat pattern. Just because they danced TO a waltz does not mean that they waltzed.
The blogger keeps referring to dancing robots, links to a home video of an amateur recital of something, links to some robot videos from years ago, but nothing here showing robots dancing a waltz on a pin's head.
We live in exciting times.
I should note that though a LOT of the things I'm talking about above are prohibitively expensive for most people, the very fact that they are coming to market at ALL is just cool.
Just imagine it now, a lighted up microelectrode array with thousands of these things on it dancing to music, making trippy patterns of light on the walls. They'll probably show up at raves a couple years from now.
No, they're tiny dancing robot overlords of doom who will dance into your brain and make you dance repetitively like some crappy animated gif.
Too bad the little fellas couldn't actually "hear" the music...since the frequency we are able to hear would sound much more like a huge roar than music
....I guess they probably just were trying to run for cover from the thunderstorm... Can you imagine the damage a single drop of rain can make on a microrobot?
Those scientists are just a bunch of insensitive clods.
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Yep.
"Image of surface reconstruction on a clean Gold (Au(100)) surface, as visualized using scanning tunneling microscopy. The individual atoms composing the material are visible. Surface reconstruction causes the surface atoms to deviate from the bulk crystal structure, and arrange in columns several atoms wide with regularly-spaced pits between them."
Link to Image
:x
welcome our...pin-waltzing...micro-robot...ah, forget it.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
That depends on what type of dance. For a partnered dance with a clear lead and follow, I can imagine that nerds would be in high demand. For the gyrating bodies found in your typical club...methinks the answers do be a bit different.
Cynical Idealist
Maybe I'm just too tired, but I only find sketches and texts via that link... no video, not even a single photo... I have seen nothing there that gives any indication that these robots actually exist
so now "stuff that matters" includes people saying they did something?
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Atomic Force Microscope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_force_microscope
There are actually open source AFM projects, in this was the inspiration for part of Rebecca Ore's recent novel Time's Child.
.
(lameness filter)
No trees were harmed in the posting of this message. However, a great number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
When will it be ported to DDR?
Get on with your lives, nothing to see here!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Fuck me.
I was sitting here the other week thinking to my self that I was glad that the scientific community was doing all it could to advance our lifespans, save the bananas and the bees, fix the climate and make the Earth a better place.
Now I find that they are making dancing robots. Dancing fucking robots. Bloody hell, what a simply splendid use of their budget that is.
Please tell me that this will, in some small fashion, benefit mankind as a whole or I might have to be rather depressed.
Hrrrmph.
"Who modded this informative? Whoever it is must've been smokin' some of that martian pot!"
Better hope it doesn't fall off the pin head.
-Nemo me impune lacessit-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_stand_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F
But I guess the first poster already pointed that one out.
I am just wondering what the heck is the point of this, these are not robots, are not dancing and are not on a pin. Or am I missing something here.
Just some schmuck trying to grab headlines with a cute press release and succeeded, my goodness even Slashdot fell for it.
I'd bet it will be all over the new on TV tonight though, worse yet my parent are going to be thinking of these little C3P0's with arms and legs doing waltz's and so with the other 95% of the viewers where the reality is more like they make some flecks of dust wiggle with a static charge.
Then this guy a Duke gets grants for this retarted stuff, mean while other more deserving things don't get attention.
(long rand deleted)
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
*STOMP*
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Dancing with the Micro-Robots
I'm not really sure what Neanderthal modded this down, but I'm foregoing use of my mod points to say that you are dead-on. In the college scene, many of the leaders are men in technical majors (engineering, computer science, material science, etc.) and there is a perennial shortage of leaders. So yes, nerds *are* actually fought over by cute girls. And the dedicated girls have this tendency to want to know how to lead, so that they can teach their friends to dance as well.
Additionally, ballroom dancing is actually quite popular in nerdy schools. One of the largest dance competitions in the U.S. is held at MIT (yes, that MIT), and if our school could afford to go there, we would...
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Waltz is for spaceships!
Polka, on the other hand... Yes, THAT polka.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
This kind of article makes me wonder.. is science merely an 'upgrade' of religion...?
which is totally what she said
I like the way the image has "No higher resolution available." underneath. Seems apt.
Not only do I have to be afraid of spiders laying eggs on my brain, now I have to worry about robots taking over my skull.
or it didn't happen.
Yes, in a manner of speaking.
Religion is the evolved result of the associational human mind guessing at what's behind that wind, maybe it's something trying to get me, the way something behind that moving grass might be (a perfectly reasonable, and successful fear.)
Thus placating such things involves incantations and hand movement (see Skinner's pidgeons, which repeated whatever movements they happened to be doing when a food pellet was dropped in, thus creating superstitious behavior in them.)
A few games of "my god is tuffer than your god" later, we end up with one infinitely powerful god (tougher than all gods put together! Wait. There aren't even any other gods!) who is perfect and good.
Roll in the fact that it allowed a very unproductive industry (masters of handwaving) to earn a living by convincing people their mental models of reality should include hiring them to placate the god(s), and mix it with the new theories of ethics as evolutionary products (feelings of righteousness, etc.) and bam!
Boring church on Sundays.
> Dancing Micro-Robots Waltz on a Pin's Head
"Hey, some of them went over into the corner and are just sitting there. Once in awhile one walks towards the middle, towards another bot, but then turns around and scoots right back before it gets very far."
"Oh, those are the micro-robot nerds."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.