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Swarms of Solar-Powered Microbots On the Way
Mike writes to tell us that Inhabitat has an interesting article, complete with some pretty pictures, about a new solar-powered swarm robot that could be used to collect data and aid in surveillance. "These mini-robots are quite revolutionary, considering that they contain all that's necessary to collect data and relay it back using one single circuit board. In the past single-chip robots have presented significant design and manufacturing challenges due in part to the use of solder as an adhesive. These new microbots use conductive adhesive to attach the components to a double-sided flexible printed circuit board using surface mount technology. The circuit is then folded into thirds and wrapped around the ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit). On top, a solar cell generates power for the robot and delivers 3.6 V to the unit, which is enough for it to walk. Locomotion is achieved via three vibrating legs, while a fourth horizontal vibrating leg is used as a touch sensor."
They're already programmed at a particularly high level: they're swarm robots. Yout don;t give them instructions, you give them goals. Why would you want memory on board anyway when you can just broadcast it back to a central storage device? These are the sensor and manipulator portions of the swarm, they only NEED to sense and manipulate.
the "grey goo threat" might be something to be considered, but it shouldn't stop us from further exploring micro/nanobots. I'm tired of hearing someone shout "grey goo!" or "skynet!" every time there is some advance in nanotechnology or AI (and I mean the ones who are actually being serious about it). You can't stop the progress in these fields (and you shouldn't, considering all the positive aspects), or just repeat fear-mongering from luddites/attention-whores/sci-fi-writers. Instead, try to understand current research and help to find ways to make these things safe!
Every time I hear the "grey goo" debate I ponder why some people love so much to hypothesize about the potential future without taking as much at a single glimpse at the past and present. The grey goo hypothesis states that, as a result of some technological advancement, there will be a matter that is able to function and replicate by consuming available background resources until all resources are consumed and turned into more grey goo. This position utterly fails to realize that there already is matter that does exactly that. It's called life.
Life already functions in the most optimal way possible at consuming energy and replicating more of its own kind. But the "grey goo" scenario doesn't happen due to a simple natural law of diminishing returns -- as more and more grey goo (or, in our case, life) is produced, the less and less marginal advantage is there at producing more of the same kind. Identical species (or in simpler cases, where there are no "individual specimens", identical biomasses (e.g. mold, grass) first spreads out by consuming the most readily available resource, but as its numbers grow and resources dwindle, it gains less and less marginal advantage at consuming more resources, and becomes its own competitor more than a co-operator. The fact that during the billions of years that life existed on Earth, Earth has not turned into a uniform mass of a single biomatter, utterly destroys the "grey goo" hypothesis.
On top of that, there is this "adaptability" thing. As grey goo spreads more and more, and becomes its own competitor, some strains of grey goo (lets call it blue goo), through trial and error, will function better when instead of cooperating with other grey goo, exploits it, for example by consuming grey goo directly rather than consuming what the grey goo consumes. In turn, the grey goo will now have to modify its behavior to not only consume and replicate but also to defend itself against blue goo. Then we get yellow goo which likewise will consume blue goo. Then we get some violet goo which adapts to the blue-yellow goo rivalry by, for example, becoming poisonous go yellow goo to consume while offering habitat protection to blue goo in exchange for some released energy from what the blue goo consumed.
This sequence goes on and on, until we get an ultimate form (brown goo) that sufficiently adapts to consciously exploit other forms of goo for its own needs, build constructed habitats for itself, wage wars on its own kind, and occasionally debate on whether all brown goo specimens originally evolved from humble grey goo, or whether they were created by some Divine Heavenly Goo instead.
Hizook.com has some cool videos showing the micro robots moving around. Worth checking out.
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/29/i-swarm-micro-robots-realized-impressive-full-system-integration