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Robot Composed of "Catoms" Can Assume Any Form

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Fri Feb 01, 2008 04:46 PM
from the come-with-me-if-you-want-to-live dept.
Robotics Technology
philetus writes "An article in New Scientist describes a robotic system composed of swarms of electromagnetic modules capable of assuming almost any form that is being developed by the Claytronics Group at Carnegie Mellon. 'The grand goal is to create swarms of microscopic robots capable of morphing into virtually any form by clinging together. Seth Goldstein, who leads the research project at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, in the US, admits this is still a distant prospect. However, his team is using simulations to develop control strategies for futuristic shape-shifting, or "claytronic", robots, which they are testing on small groups of more primitive, pocket-sized machines.'"
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Submission: Robot composed of "catoms" can assume any by blzb (311781)
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  • By Any Other Name (Score:5, Funny)

    by RobertNotBob (597987) * on Friday February 01 2008, @04:47PM (#22267172)
    I, for one, welcome our new replicator Overlords.

    • Multi Meme Heaven (Score:5, Funny)

      by sam_paris (919837) on Friday February 01 2008, @05:10PM (#22267506)
      T-1000 Cat is watching you masturbate! >.
    • we are doomed I tell you. Doomed.
      • Doomed? You, maybe.
        Me, being a trusted slashdot personality, am sure our new overlords will see how convenient to have someone like me at their side.
        I, for one, welcome our new t1000 overlords! Be their reign long and fruitful!

    • Re:By Any Other Name (Score:4, Funny)

      by Pollardito (781263) on Friday February 01 2008, @07:23PM (#22268842)
      ...but i suggest to our future overlords that Voltronic is a much snappier name than claytronic

    • Re:By Any Other Name (Score:4, Funny)

      by G-funk (22712) <josh@gfunk007.com> on Friday February 01 2008, @08:27PM (#22269308) Homepage Journal
      And of all slashdot stories, *this* doesn't have "whatcouldgowrong"....

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by colmore (56499)
        Whenever the self-directed technological apocalypse comes, be it army of soldier bots, self-aware ICBM control systems, nanocancer, servant droid rebellion, a world banking AI (that one is mine), or whatever, there's one thing we will not be able to say

        and that is "we didn't see this coming."

        Sci-fi has been predicting this for seventy years, and I'm starting to really believe that it might be on the list with satellites and lasers of stuff that's actually going to happen in our lifetimes.

  • Tag (Score:4, Funny)

    by snl2587 (1177409) on Friday February 01 2008, @04:47PM (#22267174)
    I suggest the tag "Prey", for all of you Michael Crichton fans.
  • Transformers! Robots in disguise!
  • Any relation to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_fog [wikipedia.org] utility foglets?

  • Replicators!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by alta (1263) on Friday February 01 2008, @04:50PM (#22267212) Homepage Journal
    Oh my goodness, those people obviously never watched stargate! They're making replicators! They are swarms of robots that can assume any form. The only way to stop them is for MacGuyver to stick his head in some ancient machine to gain their knowledge. Then he'll develope a super weapon that looks like a BFG3000 that will shoot waves at them causing them to disassociate with each other and fall to the ground like a pile of leggos. But that's only enough to stop a few of them, the REAL solution is to link all the stargates together at once (anyone seen baal?) and then send said 'waves of magical energy' through the one closest to T'ealc.

    Someone shoot them before they doom us all!!!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by wizardforce (1005805)
      either that or they end up using our "inferior" alloys instead of those fancy asguard alloys that don't rust. there's a reason they didn't compromise the hull integrity of that nuclear sub or the asguard ships. They are vulnerable to heat and apparently anything that damages the alloys they've used to make themselves out of.
    • It's all okay, though. On Atlantis, McKay can just reprogram them.

      • Oh my goodness, those people obviously never watched stargate! They're making replicators! They are swarms of robots that can assume any form. The only way to stop them is for MacGuyver to stick his head in some ancient machine to gain their knowledge. Then he'll develope a super weapon that looks like a BFG3000 that will shoot waves at them causing them to disassociate with each other and fall to the ground like a pile of leggos. But that's only enough to stop a few of them, the REAL solution is to link all the stargates together at once (anyone seen baal?) and then send said 'waves of magical energy' through the one closest to T'ealc.

        Someone shoot them before they doom us all!!!

        ...and even [i]THAT[/i] didn't work (cf. Atlantis)

        If they only had a deflector dish to reroute those waves through, it just might have worked!!

        • i can has zwix armey niphee, ducked tape, and gum rappr?

          • Re:Replicators!!! (Score:5, Informative)

            by wizardforce (1005805) on Friday February 01 2008, @05:40PM (#22267864) Journal
            it's about time someone had that point straight- milkyway replicators != Pegasus replicators! the first set basically destroyed the civilization that created reese who created the original replicators as "toys". the pegasus replicators however were created by the ancients to fight the wraith, later the ancients destroyed most but not all of their creation leaving the last surviving replicators to rebuild their "civilization" modeled after the ancients themselves with the exception being that they couldn't modify their own code [damned proprietary software!] and had a "nasty temper" rivaling that of the wraith. here's a more in depth explaination:
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Stargate)
            • the darn writers nearly screwed that logic up last episode though... they tried saying O'Neill got the Ancient idea because it was in the database left over from the Pegasus galaxy. OK that's believable. They got dangerously close to saying the Asgard "borrowed" that tech for their replicators. Grrr.

  • And that's why... (Score:3, Funny)

    by martinQblank (1138267) on Friday February 01 2008, @04:51PM (#22267234)
    ...The best part of being a Super Villian is the Doomsday devices!
  • Terminator II here we come!
    • Terminator II here we come!

      Well, we'd need two types of nanobots, or give them a double function: One type can bend and expand like a muscle cell to provide mobility. The other type needs to function as a skeleton (exo or endo, you choose).
      How will you supply the energy to nanobots? And how is that energy going to be transmitted to different parts of the body? How will it be stored? And if it's in the form of liquid, you'll need blood vessels too. Also, if the design of the form that you're going to emulate

  • Catoms? (Score:5, Funny)

    by StCredZero (169093) on Friday February 01 2008, @04:54PM (#22267276)
    Oh Hai! I haz a covalent bond?

  • Herds of Cat Robots! Cool! (Score:3, Funny)

    by billstewart (78916) on Friday February 01 2008, @04:54PM (#22267280) Journal
    Herds of tiny cat robots? Cool - that'll go well with the Evil Laugh and the Monocle! [slashdot.org]
  • Bisexuals could have a robotic, hermaphroditic sex partner.

    Yeah, I know, I'm a sick puppy.....

  • Anyone that has read Alistair Reynold's Revelation Ark sees a disaster coming with this little buggers.

  • pokey pokey (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stanistani (808333) on Friday February 01 2008, @05:13PM (#22267544) Homepage Journal
    Wha... "claytronic" robots?

    I never foresaw that the machines that take over the world in the future would look like Gumby...

  • Holographic Video, Batman! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by commisaro (1007549) on Friday February 01 2008, @05:18PM (#22267622)
    One of the coolest potential applications of this is for Holographic-type communication. Perhaps not the 3D light-type display envisioned by Star-Wars and the like, but these could potentially mimic the form of someone for the purposes of communication. Also, games!

  • Claymation (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dynedain (141758) <{moc.nilcmynohtna} {ta} {2todhsals}> on Friday February 01 2008, @05:23PM (#22267684) Homepage
    Unfortunately they'll only be able to make one incredibly small movement ever 6 hours or so.

  • Mercedes-Benz SilverFlow (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jamrock (863246) on Friday February 01 2008, @05:30PM (#22267772)

    This sounds like the clarketech* that the Mercedes-Benz SilverFlow [egmcartech.com] concept has been waiting for. At the 2057 Robocar Design Challenge in Los Angeles last year (wherein car manufacturers touted concepts for cars 50 years from now), Mercedes showed off "SilverFlow", a shape-changing car that melts into a pool of liquid metal when not in use. The vehicle's shape would be tailored for different usage scenarios through programming, and the entire concept revolves around micro-particles that combine in varied ways. But is this really feasible though? I suppose that it's within the realms of possibility, but are there any serious deal-breakers that could derail this vision? Any thoughts?

    *From Arthur C. Clarke's well-known aphorism about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, "clarketech" refers to tech so advanced that we don't know as yet how it would work. Love the term.

    • Re:Mercedes-Benz SilverFlow (Score:5, Funny)

      by amRadioHed (463061) on Friday February 01 2008, @08:20PM (#22269256)

      Mercedes showed off "SilverFlow", a shape-changing car that melts into a pool of liquid metal when not in use.
      I used to have a Chevy that sorta did that. I mean not the shape-changing thing, but it did form a big pool of liquid wherever I parked it.
  • Until they can replicate Scarlet Johanson or Natalie Portman, it sounds pretty worthless to me.
    • The evidence from living systems is that you get more success designing several specialized but simple and robust systems than one generalized but complex and fragile system.

      Come to think of it, this is the lesson most people seem to have drawn about robotics, too. Maybe even for electronics, inasmuch as we're increasingly seeing people get a collection of specialized consumer electronics (MP3 player, PDA or smart phone) rather than try to program their microcomputer to do it all.

      Apparently it's so dazzlin

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