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Smallest Autonomous Untethered Robot Ever Created 129

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-can-it-stir-fry-mushrooms? dept.
An anonymous reader sent in linkage about itty bitty research robots. Less then a quarter inch cubed, and includes a camera, microphone, and cute little treads. Includes cheesy picture of the robot turning on a dime. I guess if I had a few million of them, they could clean my living room or something, but for now this looks like pure research and not much of anything useful.
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Smallest Autonomous Untethered Robot Ever Created More

Smallest Autonomous Untethered Robot Ever Created

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  • The picture looks like the robot is turning on a quarter, rather than a dime. Not that it matters...

    - harborpirate -
  • As I was pondering what use there could be for these small robots other than voyeurism and keeping tabs on what employees really are doing, it occured to me that they could be useful for rescue operations, such as after earthquakes. Imagine releasing a horde of these guys through the rubble of a collapsed building--they'd be able to follow paths no human ever could, perhaps even the (remnants of the) plumbing system. And they could report to the rescuers the _exact_ location of any survivors they found, allowing rescuers to be much more accurate in their attempts to save people--rather than having to move the entire building, they just dig straight to the trapped people.

    Of course, this requires that the robots become a bit more advanced, and actually include the sensors which are PLANNED, BUT NOT IMPLEMENTED YET.


  • What else could a small robot with cameras be used for anyway? The major application, in my view, is crime fighting.

    Or dissident fighting, should the powers that fund so deign.

  • Well, considering they are a quarter-inch cubed, I can think of tons of extremely useful applications for these little guys. They have cameras and microphones... NSA anyone? How about the showers in a girls dorm?

    I would love to get a few hundred of these.

  • Cooperation (Score:3)

    by alienmole ( 15522 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @09:55AM (#455895)
    Try thinking cooperatively as well as competitively. Your airborne device could drop and interact with a small army of ground-based devices. The ability of any single device to understand its environment is limited by its point of view. By interacting with devices in other locations, your device and its controllers can become more knowledgeable, and more intelligent. You probably already interact with orbiting satellites (GPS) - why not with some little guys on the ground?

    As just one example, will your airborne device be flying into bunkers to locate stored chemical weapons? Will it fly under doors?

    A future robotic ecosystem will have both insects and birds.

  • From the article: "Doug Adkins, who developed the mechanical design for the new mini-robot, says the researchers further reduced its size by using a new rapid prototyping technique to form the device's body. Called stereolithography, ..."

    Ok, stereolithography was first launched in 1987--is fourteen-year-old technology really "new"?

  • Who says you have to be 15 to love one of those babies? I say, we get a bunch of them (like 15) and set up some wacky web cams. DORM GIRLS LIVE!!!!

  • For "CIA", read "Special Circumstances", if I read your user name correctly? ;-)

    Seriously, though, it would probably be an NSA project, rather than CIA. Not to mention the fact that the CIA has too much trouble getting their act together. Or perhaps the FBI, which would be more frightening. Or maybe the TAA (TLA Assignment Authority).

    It's a bird, it's a plane, no, it's SUPER Fly. No, wait, superfly has been done. The six million dollar fly? The bionic fly? If it could do marketing, I see a TV series in the offing... The problem, though, would be making the tiny super suits for the various insects. Very expensive.
  • Actually, by my (perhaps suspect) calucations .5 x .5 x .5 inches = .125 cubic inches (i.e. 1/8th cubic inches).

    2/3" by 2/3" by 2/3" is a lot closer to the 1/4 cubic inches stated in the article.
  • Ok, fit the thing with a mini-camera and you have a sellable geek/voyeur toy.
  • ...think "flea circus"
    --
    MailOne [openone.com]
  • Dude, nobody's gonna be reading the article for at least half an hour.
    ----------
  • Again, look to Stephenson's Diamond Age. The Toner Wars are what will happen. If you think you're bugged, design a hunter-killer to destroy any nanobot that it encounters. They're so cheap that it could be part of your home's security system.
  • So, if he was so right, how do you make a buck off it? If it's profitable, you *will* find a market.

    The problem with suppressing technology is when it gets too fun for the technologists. Then they keep at it just to piss you off.

    DB
  • Not useful? Remember, unthethered robotics is a near and expanding field. This kind of stuff is needed to get to the cool stuff.

    If you think about it, your first 'Hello World!' program probably wasn't 'useful' by any conventional definition of the word, but it was a required step to learning how to do more interesting.

    Combining untethered robotics with induction charging (so they can charge without having to use complex plugs or by flying/crawling past induction outlets) is the key here. Anything else requires putting the development of super efficient energy storage in your critical path.

    I wouldn't mind having a small flock of fingernail sized robots circling me, charging via induction by swooping past my cell phone, and taking out mosquitos or bees that came within a foot of me.
  • Though if you used the ambient radio waves to charge a battery, you could probably use the free power to work at least one hour in 24. For some things (such as crawling back and forth in a pipe to check for flaws) that might be enough.

    DB
  • I am familiar with crystal radios... what I meant was, what keeps this technique from being extended to other minute electronic applications, for example, a digital wristwatch? Or, why not run a whole bunch of these devices in series to pump up the juice? It just seems to me there must be some catch to pulling free energy out of the air, or everyone would be doing it.
  • Put a camera on these things, they'd render mirrors on the shoes completely useless. Call me crazy but this is a voyeur site's dream. A miniature robot with a camera, that could probably fit under a lot of doors and move fairly undetectable... Come to think of it, I want one now.
  • No, actually, you overfly and drop millions of them all over the city. They're cheap, simple, and everywhere. The enemy can't take the time to wipe all of them out because it takes too long to find them (they would hide themselves like bugs too)and the enemy's troop positions are being tracked often enough by surviving bugs that your chances of being surprised drop to very low.

    DB
  • The Borg have invaded Earth!
  • The best use of tiny robots, in my opionion, would be help around the house. They could spend all night while you sleep picking up dirt, dust, or whatever and toss it in the garbage for you. A crumb to them would be like a basketball. They could cut your grass, one blade at a time. Maybe they could even shovel your driveway, moving little hunks of snow [those treads would come in handy]. They could match up all your missing socks for you on the laundry room floor.

    Sure they're tiny -- but you just use *lots* of them. It would be even better if you could get them to reproduce and repair each other.

  • person:What happened to that building?
    fireman:ohh, it was another one of them damn fusion powered spy bugs that went critical again, 3rd one this week.
    Person: why do they keep doing that?
    Fireman: they're all running WinCE, they segfault everytime that they fly by a microwave.
    ----------------------
  • This technology could be very useful... I have three words:

    No more colonoscopy!

    Seriously though, a while back I saw this bit on TV about this guy who implanted this little metal skeleton type thing on the outside of a cockroach. Then, by using electrical impulses to the fake skeleton, you could basically control the movement of the roach. At the size of a roach (which a lot of people know can get to anywhere) it would be extremely useful for exploring earthquake rubble and other disasters where search and rescue is inhibited by large chunks of wood and stone.

    It's quite a step up from the Basic Stamp (http://www.parallaxinc.com [parallaxinc.com]), but unlike the Stamp, as far as usefulness goes, I think that it'll be a few more years before something really cool is born from this technology.

  • After contacting the Sandia lab, I learned that the robot does *not* have what I was calling a ROM processor. It has a PIC 16C77 microcontroller. Mea culpa. This should be an interesting project to follow!
  • There was a movie called Inner Space that dealt with shrinking a person in a machine and injecting them into another person, but I don't think that's along the same lines as you're talking about. The only other one that comes to mind are the nanities from Star Trek.
  • The real question is can they moderate on /. And if they could would they mod this up as +1 insiteful. And if that is true would a cluster of them, after poring grits down my pants mod it up to +5? makes you think doesn't it?


    ________

  • Yea, and checking out who's using Napster to download illegal mp3's, who's running a pirated ersion of Windows, that sort of thing. Also, all those junkmail companies have a new way of gathering statistics on people, no more buying mailing lists for them.
  • with cameras installed, crawling around Natalie Portman's dressing room...*drool*

    Going on means going far
    Going far means returning
  • The real question is can they configure a web server correctly and negate the slashdot effect.

    So far, it appears not. :(
  • Don't forget the obvious usage of having a couple of these guys constantly reminding your boss that you need that new Beowulf cluster for a personal workstation along with a 250% raise.
  • There's also a HUGE difference between "a quarter inch cubed" and the articles statement of "a quarter of a cubic inch". The robots are really about 1/2" by 1/2" by 1/2", and not 1/4" by 1/4" by 1/4". This is off by a factor of 8!

    ** Martin
  • lighter-than-air robots

    Does that give me the right to say, "i was just clearing the room of Bugs" if I fart? fine by me, let them flot away with the wind.


    ________

  • heck, as soon as you can synchronize the movement of these things you've got two hugely interesting aesthetic possibilities to explore:
    1. tiny robot ballet / dynamic B&W bit-map images/graffitti (with tiny-robots as the bits)
    2. multiple simultaneous video-feeds of tiny nature (extreme close up + possible time-lapse + movement of grass growing, insects being born, movement over unusual surfaces, etc.)
    usu. if you stop thinking about your long-term goals for five seconds and look at what you've got right now you can most always find something really cool.
  • Actually I am talking about a '50s movie where a team of doctors and a ship are shrunk and put in a patient's blood stream to cure a brain tumour with a laser thingy. It was quite interesting.
  • I saw a show on the Discovery channel where scientists built a robotic bee that was so bee-like that it fooled the other bees. Basically it looked like a bee, and it imitated the movements of the leader, and sucussfully led the migration to different pollen fields. The bees fell for it as if it was one of them. Just thought I'd share.
  • What else could a small robot with cameras be used for anyway?

    Uh, how about spying on people who don't like the government? Once upon a time, the CIA & FBI had extensive files on John Lennon, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, not to mention pro-democracy groups all around the world. Why do you sound so happy that intelligence organizations might have this? I'm not comforted by the thought that I might express a negative opinion of Bush at a dinner party and have that fact noted in my permanent federal file ...

  • . . . but they could also be used to deploy chemical and biological weapons. I mean, imagine that each one carries a little bit of something nasty, they distribute themselves widely in your enemy's position, then release their nastiness on command.

    For that matter, why not have self-assembling land mines?

    All this assumes, as others have pointed out, that these botlets ever become useful.

  • A hive mind? (Score:3)

    by leperjuice ( 18261 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @10:03AM (#455929)
    I'm surprised, given the predilection for Beowulf-cluster-posts, that no one has mentioned the possible weirdness that might evolve if the robots were able to act as a single parallel processing cluster.

    A core portion of the onboard memory could be used to store the basic OS with new functionality grafting on to the system as new robots are added (bringing with it more processing power and storage).

    Now, I don't mean to imply that you would use a bunch of these things to do cryptanalysis, but rather than have a single dedicated controller machine, the OS could exist as a "hive mind", distributed piecemeal (think kernel modules) across multiple little bots.

    An example: you've got a mini fleet of bots down at the bottom of the sea and you want to change their programming. Send down one new bot with new code and it will "infect" the system and update all other bots.

    Just a thought....

  • Would this really work? If this is true, why can't electronic devices run themselves on ambient radio signals present everywhere? I guess it is a question of signal strength?
  • >What else could a small robot with cameras be used for anyway?

    I'd use it to find the toys my son put down the bathtub drain. I'd like to take a shower without 5 inches of water in the tub.
  • The annoying thing is that it /would/ work, Tesla was *right*, and, as usual, greed and nastiness caused his work to be squashed....
  • I love flying pig jokes!

  • To me, the concept of "pure research" is dangerously close to a bunch of geeks playing with their toys in a California lab... Then again, without "pure research" PARC never would have profited from the GUI interfa....oh yeah. Damn.
  • This thing could be deadly... it could be an assassin with a poison needle, or deliver a payload of a sugar cube size piece of high grade plastic explosive.

    'Course, you'd have to surprise your target, this thing ain't exactly a pursuit model; it only moves at 20 inches per minute, or a little under 8 1/2 millimetres per second... reminiscent of the steamroller guy in Austin Powers :)

  • Subject says it all...
  • this looks like pure research and not much of anything useful.

    Pure research useless? Boy, what planet you from?

  • These would be great to create a "live" command and conquer game. Strap a laser pointer for weapons and an infrared sensor for hit detection. Other unit detection would be the tricky part. So much more interesting to see these little bad boys running over terrain than a small screen of sprites.

  • Careful of those little buggers (Score:4)

    by Cubic_Spline ( 211139 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @09:09AM (#455939)
    I see unprecedented possibilities for human mind control. One of those things crawls inside your ears or nose and latches onto your brain stem and *WHAMMO*. I'm serious, I swear, I saw something like this on Star Trek once....
  • you obviously have no natural talent for being a spook.

    Indeed, the existence of these wee timrous little beasties ought to scare the bejezus, ( whatever THAT is), out of you.

    kfg
  • My mini robot [darpa.mil] can target your mini-robot for a mini-smart bomb strike.
  • Who remembers the cockroach in 'Fifth Element' that transmitted the President's meeting back to the baddies?

    Security concerns aside I'd *love* to have one of these guys to play with with a micro-camera/mic/xmitter combo. Drive it under the door and into your boss's office *while* you're working!

    Also, with the smaller mass it's more feasible to build a flying or gliding robot.

    "Like a fly on a wall" will have an entirely new meaning.


  • Those mysterious alien robotic roaches from the X-Files are only a year or so off. ;)
  • /.ers must not know what ROM processor circuits are. There is NO CPU. There is only a counter, a one-shot, and the ROM (plus maybe some I/O conditioning stuff). ROM processor circuits are good for very simple, repetative tasks like driving a stepper motor, but NO GOOD for tasks where any sort of computation or branching decision is made. They have thier place, but I'd hardly call them "robots".

  • cool (Score:4)

    by omega_rob ( 246153 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @09:11AM (#455945)
    I'd use an army of those bad boys to conduct covert ops from my cube. Spying on board meetings at the office, gathering incriminating evidence on my enemies, that sort of thing. I bet if you had enough of them you could use them for more insidious purposes, like political assassinations and infiltrating the dread pirate Napster headquarters. That'd be cool. Wrong, somehow, but cool.

    omega_rob

  • Anyone read the articles? (Score:3)

    by AntiPasto ( 168263 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @09:14AM (#455946) Journal
    I mean... the camera, and the other cool things you listed are *planned*... it just has a temperature sensor and treads.

    Ahem. Do you read?!? Can you?

    Garfield the cat says that people who can read, should!

    ----

  • I guess if I had a few million of them, they could clean my living room or something, but for now this looks like pure research and not much of anything useful.

    Yeah, and in the future I foresee the need for only three or four computers in the world...
  • These are similar to what I was talking about [slashdot.org]. The interesting thing about these things is they fly in the face of conventional robotic wisdom. [slashdot.org] Mark Tilden creates analog robots, which by any practical sense should mean they have no logic in them; however, he has shown that somehow his robots do make "decisions" and "learn" from experience.

    Imagine, a veritable army of these things tending to your yard.

  • Can you say bye-bye Terminex?
    Put one of those drill thingies on the front and program them to look for termites and termite tunnels and launch a couple dozen around the house.
    They could be programmed to go after June bugs, cockroaches, roly polies, spiders-- though they may be too quick for miniXtermiNaders.
    They could them communicate with the others, using triangulation from other MXTN's and relay their coordinates and circle the buzzards and destroy the entire nest. YeeHaa!

    Actually, that triangulation idea is a great one. They could create a little miniature wireless network, relaying info to the others. Kind of like tiny little Borg's running around your yard. Now if they could just feed on the bug's and recharge their batteries, that would definitely be something. Indefinite, mobile, bug zappers. I like it!

    drive stainless [dmcnews.com]

  • The ultimate size of the miniature robots is primarily limited by the size of the power source -- the three watch batteries.

    Jeez, can't the DoE afford a power source that doesn't come from Wal-Mart?

  • Projects such as these are well funded by the intelligence services. It would be their dream come true to create a small robot that was capable of circulating around air conditioning vents and landing on the ceiling in order to spy.

    There has been a lot of work into 'bionic' insects for this purpose. The idea is that you mount a small camera or microphone onto a fly, and also some small electronics that control the flies behaviour. You then have the perfect spy bot.

    It seems to me that the next big surveilance technologies will be spawned from this sort of research. Terrorists and drug dealers had better watch out, because with these sorts of tools our police forces will really be able to make an impression, and perhaps really give them a good hiding. Its about time, too.

    What else could a small robot with cameras be used for anyway? The major application, in my view, is crime fighting.

    They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

  • What else could a small robot with cameras be used for anyway? The major application, in my view, is crime fighting.

    pr0n!

  • Everything seems to be getting smaller. From micro PCs to super computers to nanobots to appliances etc etc etc.
    I love to see any kind of progress in this field of genre. Just imagine the possibilities when doctors are able to send in small probes in our bodies (there was also a movie like that wasn't it?!?). No need to slicing and dicing for surgery.
    There is so much potential for this technology. But there is much more work to be done. All in good time though!
    peace out.
  • "Over the next few years, with additional help from other Sandia groups, Heller and Adkins expect to add to the mini-robots either infrared or radio wireless two-way communication capability"

    This aspect of robotics interests me the most. Once robots start communicating with each other, researchers will be able to assign one "master" task to a group of robots, then let them figure out the execution (has this been done in labs yet?). Exciting and scary at the same time: where's Neo when you need him?

  • radio? (Score:3)

    by scotpurl ( 28825 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @09:33AM (#455955)
    I'd think the logical thing would be to broadcast radio to these things, then convert the signal into power. That'd both control/direct the "swarm", and provide abundant, 24x7 power indoors. The batteries could be recharged from the radio signal, and the device could then make limited movements outside its normal range.

    Inefficient, but it'd work. At least till tiny fusion reactors are invented.
  • Sigh.... Yet another poorly researched /. article. According to the article, these babies don't have cameras or mics yet, just a temperature sensor. The rest is speculation and consideration. You know, it'd be nice if the people that submitted stories read the articles, even if the /. staff doesn't.
  • Yes these robots could be quite useful in helping humanity, however we must also consider the harmful effects. If wiretapping regulations are extended to use of micro-robot spycams, what happens to the fourth ammendment on unreasonable searches? At the present I'm not even certain that people who are wiretapped even have to be notified after the fact. Why worry about the mirrors from Orwell's 1984 when we wouldn't even know if there were robot cams present. Sure you could start putting signal jammers all throughout your home, but that'd work to a disadvantage too, since you'd also be prevented from getting broadcast tv, wireless phones, or other currently useful mass technologies like wireless networking. Already people on this forum were talking about using such devices to spy on one another. Not to sound high handed with morals or anything since even I might be tempted to make use of such things, but still we should consider all applications of something before we progress in that direction.
  • Even smaller, but not auto-mobile.
    They have some power, computation and comm-link
    on a chip the size of a piece of glitter.
    Each might make a single measurement of some type,
    but be deployed in thousands or millions.
    People have been building some of these.
  • I don't care what anyone says. Something that small is bound to end up inside my PC case. I like the part about the temp sensor. I could have the thing roam about taking readings, get an overall temp map.

    I know it may seem lazy, but when you have to place thermistors every inch or so, it can get fairly tedious.
    Of course I see the applications in the surveyliance and such, and it kinda makes me think 1984 telescreen stuff. Spooky. The best part in that book is when they thought there was no surveilance, and they were talking:

    "We are the dead" Winston Said.
    "We are the dead" Julia Repeated
    "You are the dead" The telescreen reported.

    Not something I'd like to have to deal with.

    So, next time someone shows you their little tiny robot that's not for overclocking, crush it. (=

    "I have not slept a wink"

  • Wow, spew some vague, unrealistic, sci-fi, "Big-Brother" tripe and it get's modded up. I'll have to remember that.

    Anyways, all that aside let me answer your question for you:

    What else could a small robot with cameras be used for anyway?

    How about anywhere that is to small for a human to get to troubleshoot. How helpful would it be to be able to send a small robot w/camera into a complex machine to see why it wasn't working, instead of having to completely disassemble it? I'm not talking about anything unrealistic like actually fixing it, just acting as a small, very flexible pair of eyes.

    Just apply this robot to the following statement:
    "I really wish this shit wasn't packed in here like this, so I could see what the problem was."

  • I think this bit of research is particularly facinating to anyone interested in archeology or related sciences. I remember a series on PBS about the Egyptian pyramids; For years archeaologists were prevented from exploring their inner structures due to the tiny access shafts into the main chamber. The only in was to squeeze someone into a 3 foot by 3 foot passage (several hundred meters in length) . Improvements in robotics allowed them to roll a macro-version of this type of robot into the chamber with a camera. Now, if they ARE able to efficiently add a camera to this little device, think of the academic and exploratory possibilities. A waterproof bot could travel to the ocean floor to identify under-the surface micro-organisms. Space-bound bots could land on adverse planets to explore inside the cracks in rocks and hardened soil, etc etc. Though maybe not practical for the everyday person, (I don't think you'll ever see something like this walking your dog or bringing you beer)improvements on this kind of robot could lead to astounding scientific discoveries. That should be exciting to all of you research-heads out there.
  • I guess if I had a few million of them, they could clean my living room or something, but for now this looks like pure research and not much of anything useful.

    A robot small enough to climb into the inside of a pipe, not useful? Please.

    What I want is one with enough intelligence (or a link back to a computer with enough intelligence) to crawl around in my walls exterminating ants.


    --

  • Great... now, with just a little more development, the FBI can drive their bugs around to get a better angle for picking up voices. And they get video.

    They'll need some skilled operators to dodge the vacuum cleaner, though.

  • "Quick, name a French rock star (no, Jean Luc-Ponty does not count). See what I mean?" -- Johnny Halliday -- Serge Gainsbourg -- Daft Punk Just because you may not have heard of them doesn't mean they aren't famous.

  • screw all that... (Score:3)

    by Gehenna_Gehenna ( 207096 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (nettenavac)> on Monday February 05, 2001 @10:09AM (#455965) Homepage
    time to negotiate rights for
    Battlebots! The Home Game!
    $$$$$!
  • OK... we've already beaten to death the dime vs. quarter and the fact that the camera, et al., are planned and not presently implemented. My beef is that I was sorely disappointed when I read the article based on the promise from the /. abstract.

    There is a major difference between "one quarter cubic inch" and "one quarter inch cubed".

    Put into mathematical terms,
    1/4"^3 does *not* equal 1"^3 x 1/4. It's 1/64 cu in. That would have been/will be most impressive.


  • That would make a good name for it:

    SAUREC

    ... sounds evil.

  • You are probably thinking of "Fantastic Voyage" and it was from the 60's (I think it was a book by Isaac Asimov). The effects were pretty good for the time, but lame by today's standards.
  • better yet, who remembers the dragonfly in that old Danny Dunn book? man that thing kicked ass...

    "Leave the gun, take the canoli."

  • Heh. That's only because today's standards are lame.

    Personally, I always found the FX from the "pre-SGI/Dreamworks era" to be much more aesthetically pleasing. They often did an excellent job of conveying the idea, without presenting you with visually jarring CGI &c.

    Sure, you could often tell that the scene contained non-real elements, but let's face facts: you can still tell that. At least movies like Fantastic Voyage, Forbidden Planet, The Black Hole, and even Barbarella don't leave you with the same sour taste in your mouth that you got from the FX in the new Godzilla or The Phantom Menace.

    On another note, all we need to do now is combine the SAUREC technology with the sugar- or slug-eating technology referenced earlier. Remember: "it's not fun and games until somebody loses an eye (to a cluster of carinvorous microbots)."

  • For purposes of sensing/surveillance, I see a more interesting (and ominous) technology: Smart Dust [berkeley.edu]. The eventual goal is to miniaturize things so much that the 'robot' (if one can call something that has no ability to move itself a robot) is the size of dust motes. You'd release a cloud of this stuff into the air, with the expectation that some of it will end up somewhere interesting to you. They'd network with each other optically, so large amounts of power wouldn't be needed for comms. Shades of a Neal Stephenson novel.
  • Danny Dunn was serious Sci-fi, even though it masqueraded as pulp. The dragonfly was invented after Danny and his grandfather discovered a way to make the most revolutionary of materials, 'semiconductiors', which allowed electrical switches and relays (the book never mentions transistors or circuit lithography) to be minaturized! Mind you, they were first published in the late fifties and early sixties IIRC, so this was *cutting* edge for the time. Other Danny Dunn books covered Low-temp Superconductors, Quantum Theory, etc... The plot of 'Honey, I Shrunk the Kids' was stolen almost entirely from the Danny Dunn book where he and his friends were minaturized and had to cross the back yard.
  • I was wondering how they fit three watch batteries into a robot that is only 0.0156 cubic inches (a quarter inch cubed), then I reread the article and realized the robots were 1/4 cubic inches in size.

    Slashdot: Math?! MATH!?!? We doan' need no steenkin' math!

    --

  • Re:but could they... (Score:4)

    by Dr.Dubious DDQ ( 11968 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @10:56AM (#455977) Homepage
    can they moderate on /.

    I think if you read the article the answer is obviously "no". They run on batteries, not crack!

    (Says the guy that just used up 5 moderator points... :-) )


    ---
    "They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
  • What I have seen done, which is more practical, especially for the hobbyist, is to use a small solar cell and a capacitor. When the capacitor is charged, move; when it is not, sit still and charge it. This works in lit indoor spaces as well as outdoors during the day.
  • Too small to clean my appartment. I'm the very incarnation of Schulz' Pigpen. I'm too busy designing things, like the new one cent coin. [dragonswest.com]

    They do, however, hold immense promise in further cluttering up my bedroom. Assuming I ordered one gross, I could have 144 little boxes to trip over in the night.

    --

  • "This could be the robot of the future," says Ed Heller, one of the project's researchers. "It may eventually be capable of performing difficult tasks that are done with much larger robots today - such as locating and disabling land mines or detecting chemical and biological weapons."

    No way - the airborne sow I'm working on is much more likely to do these jobs better than this thing.
  • In a relatively short time, these things will be hosting uninvited web-cams and microphones throughout every nook and cranny of our lives. Covers of the Nat'l Enquirer will now show celebrities grunting on the toilet instead of sunbathing nude by the pool.

    Oh well. We'll adjust, somehow.

  • How about anywhere that is to small for a human to get to troubleshoot.

    Given how clumsy most of the robots that _I've_ seen are, I think it would be far more likely that those little robots are going to get STUCK in those small places and then I'll go nuts having to disassemble everything to get them out again...

  • I'd like to be able to jam one in my bloodstream and let it clean out my clots and stuff.

    Or put it in your colon and let it get those pollups instead of just sitting around and getting colon cancer.

    Click here for $50! [dangifiknow.com]

  • Not so useful? Sounds to me as though they're not much larger than the "ingesticam" recently thrown before the FDA. Wouldn't it be nice if that little caplet-shaped device could, for instance, snag polyps, or obtain biopsies from suspicious areas? Once the tools get that small, at least in the GI tract, the nightmare of perforation becomes a mere worry of errant, non-penetrating slices.

  • New "Nanobot" category on Battlebots! (Score:3)

    by tenzig_112 ( 213387 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @09:47AM (#455997) Homepage
    You'll need special electromagetic microscope cameras to see them fight, but it'll be awesome.

    My money's on the bot with the hydraulic thumb tack spike.

    www.ridiculopathy.com [ridiculopathy.com]

  • Re:Actually, I am sure the CIA have better ones. (Score:3)

    by CaseyB ( 1105 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @11:06AM (#455998)
    The major application, in my view, is crime fighting.

    <squeaky voice>"Put down your weapon. You have twenty seconds to comply."</squeaky voice>

  • yeah, what'd they call it? the smallifyer or something like that? our school library had a bunch of them (though not all), and i read all i could. guess that's why the thought of VR goggles and gloves etc. didn't seem new to me when they came out, i'd already read about them in a DD book..

    "Leave the gun, take the canoli."

  • Hmmm... For good efficiency, you'd need a quarter wave dipole antenna. If you want the antenna to fit inside the longest dimension, you're now talking 10GHz or so. Extremely high frequency microwave radar and such. If you wanna flood your workplace with that, that's fine, but don't do it while I'm around.

  • and not much of anything useful.

    Maybe not to you.....


    --------------------
    Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
  • They can't be the smallest untethered autonomous robots ever created because I've created at least one that is smaller, and one that might be smaller (about the same size).

    Sure, my smallest robot [geocities.com] might be pretty boring and simple compared to these things (and operating with vastly reduced efficiency because I still haven't got around to putting the coaster wheel on...), but it's probably almost half the size - and since it's solar powered, it is genuinely autonomous (I don't think a battery powered robot can be said to be fully autonomous unless it is capable of recharging or replacing its own batteries).

    So Nyah to Sandia - your robots might be much better, but mine are still smaller :-)
  • The 'speculation' is well beyond the "gee, maybe someday" stage. It's only a matter of time, and a very short time at that.

  • Well the site is slashed already.

    Security concerns aside I'd *love* to have one of these guys to play with with a micro-camera/mic/xmitter combo. Drive it under the door and into your boss's office *while* you're working!

    The flip side of this is that the boss could also to this to you.

    Talk about the proverbial "fly on the wall"!

    [but as always, flies are vulnerable to things like hairspray clogging up the wings, and messing up the bugs eyes.]

  • useful (Score:3)

    by wishus ( 174405 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @09:23AM (#456014) Journal
    well, i think the uses for these guys are pretty widespread.. of course, spying, as others have mentioned, but since they're small and cheap to make, they are semi-disposable:

    dump a couple thousand on mars.. if one falls in a ditch who cares. use them to collect video and topography data until they run out of batteries.

    dump a couple thousand on the battlefield. no tank is going to see a little robot on a rock. military intelligence could benefit.

    mount some landmine detectors on them.. a bunch of these little guys could really cover some area quickly.

    pretty cool stuff.

    wishus
    ---

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