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8 Legged Robotic Micro Ant from Sweden
Steinar Bang writes "
Swedish researchers at Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, are creating
micro-robots and micro-motion systems as micromachined 3D silicon
structures. They have created an
8-legged robotic micro ant able to carry 50 times its own weight
on its back.
" Cool looking 'bots - if you like this type of thing check out the bionic rats.
Anyone alse think like this sounds like the title for a bad scary movie?
The Hacker and the Ants is excellent! Those particular ants were software, rather than hardware, but who cares - it's a most entertaining read. I personally have found Rucker's novels to be a mixed bag, some good, some, well, not good. But The Hacker and the Ants is the best that I've read thus far.
For entertaining nonfiction, it's hard to beat Rucker's SEEK!. Both of these, and more, can probably be found at your local (or online) book merchant.
You can also go get some neat software for free (cellular automata, artificial life, and chaos stuff mostly) at Rucker's web page.
Yes, ants have 6 legs and spiders have 8. But methinks that's not the point. Ants are social creatures, and their strength and versatility is in their group behavior. Spiders tend to be solitary predators, so despite the number of legs it might be more accurate to compare these mechanical micro-critters to ants. Particularly if they're intended to work together with some kind of "hive-mind" coordinating their actions.
If they had a hive-mind and could fly, they'd be robotic bees or wasps.
If they had a hive-mind and were designed for demolition or some other destuctive purpose, they'd be robotic termites.
As it is, the description of them as robotic ants seems reasonable.
B=Leaf cutting ants can only carry 12-14 times their own weight.
C= There is no known species of ant which can carry more than 50 times its body weight. I would mark you redundant...but redundancy is within your own statements. By statements A and B, we already know that C is true....so you didn't need to include it.
Sorry...i just felt like picking at your little niggles.
Where a scientist have made a small "railroad" out of molecules.
I think it is great. We have to use something like this when we build our nanotech assemblers
i love that title.. i think its hilarious.
Juln
Ants don't have a "ruler", but they are self-organizing, like the linux community :-)
Each ant is taking part in the "brain" of the community, communicating with other ants.
Visit www.myrmecology.org for more information
about ants!
What is rarely mentioned is that most of the lives lost in the Hiroshima bombing were civilian lives, while an invasion would most likely have led to a larger military loss.
Also, I'm shocked that some people tend not to count non-U.S. populations as people, so they only see the statistics for the U.S. as opposed to world statistics.
Your original point still remains true, though. The advantages of nuclear power may well outweigh its disadvantages, though when disaster occurs with nuclear power (due to human error or otherwise), it's far more destructive in its effect as opposed to more conventional power sources.
And I'm not going to argue the points of nulear weapons; it's now almost a given that they have more drawbacks than advantages.
(p.s. isn't this thread offtopic? What does this have to do with the robots?)
Well, call me strange, but I always thought it was the applications that display the video files, not the OS. Berk.
This takes ant farms to a whole new level. I mean you can spill them and they won't bite you. I had an ant farm when I was a kid. It was with those big ants not much smaller than that Robot ant in this article and man when those things bite it leaves a welt the size of a quarter. Now what I want to see is that you can have an ant farm full of these little robots and be able to control them from your computer to things like little bunkers for my minuture remote control army troops.
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
The Hacker and the Ants by Rudy Rucker. Ants kind of like these feature very prominently in the book, and it's a very good read. It's kind of 'Stephenson Lite'.
If you are interested in playing a video game that allows you to program the Artificial Intelligence of a mechanical spider (CyBug) then by all means visit my site and download the shareware copy. It allows you to create the AI and pit these creations against each other in a battle simulator. It looks like the concept is going from fantasy into reality, God help us all... :)
President, Tactical Neuronics - Author of A.I. Wars (The Insect Mind) http://www.TacticalNeuronics.com
A robot carrying 25 times its own weight in Europe would not be able to carry 50 times its weight in the US!
Thats _g-force_ for you, and it's supposed to be the same all over the planet. (apart from those places where it really sucks)
They fail to mention that it's also blonde and has enormous breats.
Our web sire is very lame, but that's what this animation is about. But it's a millipede-on-a-die, not an ant (just for the heck of it).
"But always she's the spectre of uncertainty I first endured, then faded, then embraced..."
A=Other ants can carry 10-20 times their own body weigth.
B=Leaf cutting ants can only carry 12-14 times their own weight.
C= There is no known species of ant which can carry more than 50 times its body weight. I would mark you redundant...but redundancy is within your own statements. By statements A and B, we already know that C is true....so you didn't need to include it.
Sorry...i just felt like picking at your little niggles.
Heh, I pasted those 2 directly from a web page, I didn't even notice that they said exactly the same thing, thanks for the boot to the head.>:)
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I've always wondered wether there are small robots available with communication built-in. Like robots that can do packet-radio or something similar. Has anybody ever seen a thing like that?
Of course, then somebody has to come up with a practical application for the really small buggers. Like a 1 cm CCD on its back...
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
"We are the ANTZ. We will assimilate you. Resistance is futile." >:)
Yeah, even mechanical ants will get ya! BTW, ants only have 6 legs!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Please excuse me whilst I get on my soapbox
Nuclear power is the cleanest[1] safest[2] form of power we have on land, and on the sea it's so much nicer than having to store tons of fuel, and for a submarine it means you don't have to surface.
But mainly you were referring to the atom bomb. The A-Bomb saved lives, both Japanese and Allied. Think about the price both of Allied lives and of Japanese if we would have had to do an invasion.
I understand that the Revisionists have probably gotten to you, though... America always is the evil force in the universe. The A-Bomb was wrong, because it was powerful.
Why do the revisionists screw with history so? Why is the US the bad guy and Japan the good guy? Do we remember which country shot first? That little thing called Perl Harbor? You know, when the countries wern't at war?
I'm not saying that the US government is always right, or that we have always done the moral thing, but please, don't believe everything you're tought in schools.
[1] Nuclear waste is pretty small volume-wise and, unlike chemical (oil, coal) power facilities it turns into non-toxic stuff with time. And it doesn't destroy nearly so much land as hydroelectric... although after everything gets flooded Hydro power is pretty good...
[2] When was the last time you saw a nuclear disaster that hurt or killed people in the US? Then compare to the number of explosions and fires and such with other types of power.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Looks like the NASA Climate Orbiter Metric Conversion team is at it again...
No, check my home page =P. Yeah ants can carry up to 50 times their own weight.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Hehe, yea, but I have never seen an ant with external power cables. :-)
-
__
Comment submitted. There will be a delay before you understand what you posted.
That depends on what species you are talking about. Hmm, time to pull out a snipbit out of The Ants FAQ:
:) Please go to my home page if you want more information on ants.
4.6 [8/15/1999] How much weight can a worker ant carry?
Up to 50 times their own weight! --Angelo Scott
See? Up to 50 times!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Ants do have six legs. Maybe it was supposed to be spiders? Ah, someone doesn't know their biology :).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Dude, every ant movies are B-movie title haha!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I wonder what happened if you mix them up since they are different species ;).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Is it less than 50 times?
xanim is unable to display the quicktime videos =(
I really don't know if I like the idea of tiny robots being able to follow me around and inspect what I do.
suuuuure you say... it's just an experiment you say... it will only be used for good purposes you say... I say look at the atom bomb, Einstein really thought it would only be used for good. If we look into it, hasn't Nuclear Power brought us more bad things than good.
It's not that I doubt the integrity of these scientists, it's just that I can't trust "Big Brother" to use this technology wisely... not that I can trust him for anything else....
---
Killroy Woz Here
Looks like they don't have power supply or control electonics onboard. :(
:p
And they have eight legs => not insects.
The "bionic rats" article you point to has
expired on Yahoo and is no longer available.
Where can I read about this story?
Please check the links before reposting elder
stories.
.sig: SEGV
Imagine being a worker ant, wandering around looking for some food one day...and you run into a mechanical replica of yourself.
I wonder if they bite. Can they make ants hills? Insecticides are probably useless against them too. "Dear...looks like we got another outbreak of mechanical ants. Hand me the giant magnet."
On the serious side, as another poster mentioned...I'm a bit concerned abou tthese being used for bad purposes. Mainly tools for spying. Whether it's a company stealing secrets from another compant, sabotoging (spelling?) computers among other things, etc. or being used for widespread monitoring of dissidence. Perhaps capable of carrying deadly poisins to inject into unsuspecting people. Creepy.
"Sign up for Alladvantage under EBS-939 and help me make money!!" in your sig looks like spam to me, and I fuckinghate spam.
of course I thought I remembered learning in elementary school that insects have 6 legs and spiders have 8? Or has that changed in the 15 years since I was a second grader?
Funny and I thought Perl == Paid employment recently located
Anyone know where I can get the Yahoo news story about the rats? They only keep stories for 2 weeks. I've seen this happen with a few links from older /. articles.
People are evil, not machines
;)
... though we have not seen real AI yet
I'm hoping the bionic rat costs less than 6 million USD...
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Am I the only person who thinks the name of this post sounds like a B-movie title?
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Why don't you use an OS that allows you to do things instead of getting in your way?
a comment and a question.
the question first:
Did anyone catch the angular velocity of the actuators? It would be in angle/time/grooves, as each joint consists of several grooves. Also the torque would be interesting.
Now the comment:
200 mW is quite a bit for a micro actuator, no? I forget if that was per leg or for the whole ant. but whoa! I seem to recall that modern laptop batteries have power ratings of 10 odd watthours, but they weigh significantly more than 2.5 grams.
How far can it walk with a battery that light? probably only a few minutes.
Johan