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Technology

Micro-robots unveiled 89

Posted by Hemos from the the-teensie-weensie-spider dept.
spiffy1 writes "A group of Japanese electronics corporations, (Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and Matsushita) have developed a 5mm by 9mm by 6.5mm robot. These robots will be used to inspect and repair power plants without need for shutdown. They can zoom between tiny pipes and wires at the rate of 2mm per second, lift nearly 1 gram, and link up with other robots to accomplish bigger tasks. "
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Micro-robots unveiled More

Micro-robots unveiled

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  • Well, this is not quite small enough for 'nanotech'. Should it be called 'millitech', then?..

    --

  • Do I sense a flame war? Or was That on usenet? I forget. Anyway this is quite cool. People have been talking about doing this for a long time and I'm glad to see someone finally walking the walk instead of just talking the talk.

    /dev
  • The military applications are frightening. These would be useful for satellite / space station maintenace, get more done with less oxygen and all.

    Jason
  • Wow looking at salon's main page and their tech page I cannot find any refrence for this story. It appears that slashdot is linking to salon stories before salon is. Good work guys!

    --Chris
  • I forget where I first saw this (it might have been /. I dunno). On Freak Tech, I found the URL for FSCRs (Fractal Shape Changing Robots).

    http://www.stellar.demon.co.uk/#introduction

    Not quite the same thing, but similar. The FSCRs allow for multiple robots ganging together for more difficult tasks.

    I wonder how long those Micro-robot critters can run without power?
  • If ANYONE sees any info on these, like how they're powered, controlled, communication, do they have cameras on them, PLEASE post the URL! I'll be scanning for days....

    -rMortyH
    ______________________________________________
    I have no use for hardware with a purpose.
  • I found the linked article not very satisfying, does anybody know of a more technical article (i'm more interrested in how they did it)?
  • Really... That Salon article didn't give much specific information. How do you tell them what to do? Do they have any basic AI? How do you communicate with them? How do they communicate amongst themselves?

    So many questions...
  • Well I would assume alot of that information is proprietary and I doubt they would really give away their trade secrets that easily, but I could be wrong.
  • And, if you are constipated, they zoom up other 'pipes' too... er, never mind...

    Bryan R.
  • Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

    Why would robots be using ANY oxygen?
    --
    "Please remember that how you say something is often more important than what you say." - Rob Malda
  • They sound like they're just the right size to be called microbots. I want one! It's a shame salon didn't have a picture... anybody seen some closeups of these babies yet?

  • That occured to me, too.

    I suppose the worst thing that drunken frat boys used to have to worry about was waking up with a face drawn on their genetalia.

    Now, you've got to worry about videotapes being circulated with a microbot tour of your colon.

  • Did you hear? (Score:3)

    by broken ( 1648 ) on Monday June 21, 1999 @10:17AM (#1840425)
    Sony will be selling a bunch of those as an add-on to their Aibo, so they can have robo-fleas :)
  • First they shrink our radios!
    Then they shrink our cars!
    Now its our robots!

    What's next?!!


    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
    -jafac's law

  • This sounds suspicious. (Score:4)

    by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Monday June 21, 1999 @10:30AM (#1840428)
    The URL looks legit, but there are a number of practical problems with the robots as described:
    • 2mm/sec?

      At that rate, they'd move 7.2 metres (23.4 feet) per hour. Power plants and industrial facilities are *big*. Unless you saturate one with bugs, your robots will take days to reach their destinations.

    • Lithium or NiCad?

      What's powering these suckers, if they take days to go anywhere? Either one of several unlikely broadcast power schemes is being used, or they're tethered, or they can't go more than a few tens of metres before their batteries run out.

    • What exactly are these supposed to do?

      The robots as described would have an interesting time actually fixing anything. Especially on battery power. The most useful application that I can think of would be to use them as remote cameras to see what's going wrong, but there are easier/more practical ways of doing this (put a motorized video camera on a ceiling track, for instance, and use faster tethered robots or just something like a proctoscope for getting into the pipes).



    This is an incomplete list, but you get the idea. IMO, this is either a hoax or else the article has significantly munged many of the details.

  • More frightening military application might be
    air-born. Bombers spread these robots on enemy's
    power plants, then these 'solders' will hack
    the plants or do more terrifying things by gathering themselves, like forming a BIG SCISSOR
    cutting wires, etc.. :)
  • There was a story on NPR last Friday about a
    guy doing research on flys - how they fly and
    navigate - he also works with aerodynamic engineers as well. The military interest is quite high in his findings. They figure they can eventually build fly-size flying bots for battle-field intel and such.
  • "and link up with other robots to accomplish bigger tasks."

    for example, if they're battlng an evil robeast, 5 can join together: 2 arms, 2 legs "and I'll form the head!" I need these.

    Form blazing sword!
  • >Why would robots be using ANY oxygen?

    Even robots need a power source. Most of the ones that need oxygen are wood-burning robots; they were used intensively in the Russian space program until the late 1960's...the universal assemblers went out of control and completely deforested space.
  • this sounds alot like a couple of cartoons i used to watch... GO-BOTS and Transformers come to mind... maybe someday there will be a real life squad of decepticons running around blowing stuff up in the name of evil!!!! ROCK ON!


  • Have you seen the Tom Selek movie called "Runaway" about heat seeking bulltes and killer little robots.

    I get that warm and fuzzy feeling when I think of 50million of these things being dropped into a school yard.
  • Has anybody ever read Stanislav Lem's

    "The Invincible"

    where a spaceship crew in search for there sistership and its crew is defeated by miniature
    cooperative robots.

    Quite an educative read!
  • three problems

    a) the robeast would have to be approxamatly 1 cm large

    b) these are robotic boxes, not robotic cats

    c) where the heck are you going to find a sword that size
  • Put little solar panels on there backs and have them walk under lamps powered by the generators every once in a while.
  • They left all sorts of questions unanswered. And they left out a picture - I wanna know what these things look like!

    I doubt that they have very much processing power or a very big communications range. IMO, this is good. Smart government spy robots recording what we're saying and doing that can pretend to be flies would be decidedly bad.

    I remain skeptical as to how useful linking many of them together will be - at a few milliters, capable of lifting a gram a piece, it takes a hell of a lot of them to lift anything of significant size.

    -Ender
  • Or how about Neal Stephensons Diamond Age with the airborn robot mites? Those guys were cool!
  • "What's powering these suckers, if they take days to go anywhere? Either one of several unlikely broadcast power schemes is being used, or they're tethered, or they can't go more than a few tens of metres before their batteries run out."

    Here's a thought, at least for a plant that contains massive amounts of wire:

    (NOTE: IANAE)

    What's to stop these guys from sapping small amounts of power directly from the wires themselves? Use the small amount of juice to run around or to charge batteries?

    Just a thought...

  • This is interesting. I can imagine several medical applications for this kind of robots... I wonder how they perform under extreme conditions (high pressure and high pH come to mind)
  • broken asked:

    How do they communicate amongst themselves?


    Just like bees, they dance.


    --- Abigail

  • What's to stop these guys from sapping small amounts of power directly from the wires themselves? Use the small amount of juice to run around or to charge batteries?


    Mainly, the insulation on the wires :).


    They could try getting power from the EM radiation given off by the wires, but wires carrying significant amouns of power are usually configured to minimize EMF, as it represents wasted power.


    They could run bare wires as power rails for the robots, but that partially defeats the purpose of having the robots in the first place, by limiting their range. It could be done, but IMO if they were going to put in that much effort they'd be better off using other approaches.


    An interesting thought, though.

  • that's it. these are 'millibots', not 'microbots', and are a very far cry from 'nanobots' (nano = 10^-9)
  • although, you have to ask yourself, if the bombers were close enough to drop teeny tiny soldiers on the plant, why would they just drop, ummmm, bombs?

    they're sort of cheaper, faster, and more destructive. :)

  • They will be mass produced and the russians will take control of them for sure. Be sure to keep your mouth shut when you sleep, and to check before you use the crapper :)
  • What I want is simple: programmable matter. I want billions of dirt cheap nano robots that can latch on to each other, and form shapes, so that designing objects would be somewhat similar to redering in POV-ray.

    You would write shapes, give them textures, and an interpreter would tell each robot what to do form the shape. You render on screen until you are ready to test an object in real life.

    I guess I'm impatient for the future.

  • > a) the robeast would have to be approxamatly 1 cm large

    Wouldn't that be something to see, Voltron battling a space beast until the big monty python foot comes down and squishes both of 'em flat.

  • I prefer the set where 5 of them form a land team, 5 form an air team, and 5 form a sea team. Then they all split up and all 15 form a robot. They still have a blazing sword, though.

  • i'm thinking child toy apps ... can you imagine owning your very own robot ant?
    -
  • These devices MUST have reliable long-term power!

    The only thing that I can think of that would work for extended periods of time would be: ElectroMagnetic broadcast power. The problem with this type of power is that it doesn't pass through impermeable material; therefore there would need to be trancievers placed profusely throughout any structure where the robots would be used.

    Also, the robots themselves would probably not be autonomous but be controlled using telemetry feedback. A console station would be used to accumulate the data, formulate a strategy to accomplish a task and to broadcast instructions to individually addressed robots who could then link up to perform the task.

    It's the only feasible and practical way I could see it working.
  • I would be seriously worried if someone could recognize me from a videotape of my colon...

  • I don't think there's anything to these things; the alleged inventor repeatedly trolls sci.space.policy, and won't even keep a constant ID on his posts so you can kill-file him.
    Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita

  • ATIP97.094 : Recent MITI-Sponsored Research On Micromachines [atip.org]
    ...which links to...
    Micromachine Center [iijnet.or.jp] - looks like this could be the project they refer to in the article.
    An older report on Flexible Automation [atip.or.jp].

    I don't have time to filter through it all just now, but others might.

  • This [iijnet.or.jp] is the micromachine R&D promo page, wherein they talk about what kind of power plan operations they're designing for. It's mostly eye candy and doesn't talk about the nitty-gritty of power or control, but at least there are some pictures.

  • The 1997 report [atip.org] leads me to believe that some of the technology required has been developed and is being integrated. A pertinent quote:

    integration is carried on the following technologies: wireless energy supply (optical and microwave), environment recognition device, connector, micro gear train, micro motor, micro catheter, micro welder, optical scanner, and angular velocity sensor

    Sadly, more detail may not be available. Another quote:

    Complete ATIP reports on Asian Science and Technology go to subscribers and collaborating organizations by direct distribution, or via electronic access. These contain text and often, charts, graphs and pictures. Reports for unrestricted distribution often contain summarized, or abstracted information. Sponsors can also obtain specific follow up information - including copies of proceedings, selected papers, exhibition particulars, updates, translations, query searches, etc. Contact ATIP at INFO@ATIP.OR.JP
  • I suppose you could beam a laser at it to supply power. Lasers come in many wavelengths that might efficiently power a tiny solar cell. It could modulate the reflections to return whatever information it would process.

    Another means of transmitting power to it could be microwaves. You could have one of its "antennas" modulated by a quartz crystal to reflect information back too.

    If there is energy around, there might be good ways to harness it to power the robot. I suppose you could even make a robot that would be happy in a caustic chemical bath too...
  • winding a robot so small would lead to many frustrated engineers...
    "Larry, go wind the 'bots."
    "sure boss. All right, now where's the screw..? Boss, do we have a magnifying glass?"
    "by the microscope."
    "Oh. ok... here we go... winding, and ..damn, i gort a cramp! Boss, my hand..!"

    and so on.
    winding is silly; not as a power source but instead in its application.
  • its a diabolical plot to kill all bug eating animals. The animal eats the robot, then the robot deposites a small but lethal dose of poison once inside. The robot then drills its way to the outside of the animal. It falls to the ground to be eaten by another bug-eating animal and the viscious cycle begins anew...
  • This article is probably based on an AP press release (it was also posted at yahoo). If it is a hoax, then somebody at AP is having a little bit too much fun today. I've checked the MITI, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, and Sumitomo web sites and have found nothing related to this announcement. However, info may be forthcoming in the next few days.

    Your skepticism is well taken. I also suspect that the application may be a little far fetched at this time. However, MITI has political and financial powers that should never be underestimated. The Japanese are pursuing the advancement of micro-technology. I remember a time when they also decided to pursue high performance computing. At first, this seem like a joke but it is not a joke anymore.

    And know I would like to say something totally non-PC (maybe not). It's an old joke related to how the Japanese have always managed to smaller and smaller items.

    Did you hear about the Japanese businessman that just went bankrupt trying to sell miniature dildos?
  • Broadcast power seems very likely.
    And not just because of the link a bit further up giving the Micromachines lab stated purpose as investigating it.

    These things are tiny, they can't have much a brain. Is it unreasonable to speculate they are controlled and powered on the same frequency?
  • Here's a disturbing thought:

    that would look like a man made out of thousands of tiny little insects. Imagine if the little buggers were constantly rearranging themselves...

    my skin would crawl because the "macro-bot's" skin really was...
  • Sorry to be a pedant but...

    "twinkle twinkle little bat how i wonder where you're at up above the world you fly like a teapot in the sky"

    Should be

    "Twinkle twinkle little bat how I wonder what your at, Up above the world you fly, Like a teatray in the sky."
  • Hehe, that was one great movie! I watched it several times.

    Warm fuzzies? I take it you're getting harassed at school.:)

  • Two words.

    Torture Method

    Think about it... one or two may not be too bad, but make a guy swallow a bunch, and ... Well... you do the math. ;)


  • It's probably your use of 'daveo' to refer to yourself, instead of just using 'me' and 'I'....and of course, it doesn't help that you aren't using capitalization. You may prefer this style, but the moderators change every day, and are made up of the average slashdot reader/poster, so if you're *continually* getting marked down, it's probably cos everyone finds it annoying.

    Also, I suspect that with a .sig like yours, you're attracting negative moderator attention. I'd lose it if I were you.

    Anyway, hope this advice helps,

    dylan_-


    --

  • Sounds very unlike GO-BOTS and Transformers to me, on the grounds of:
    1. They were very large robots, not very small ones.
    2. They didn't make a habit of linking up with other robots to perform tasks (until the advent of the Special Teams, of course :-)
    3. These robots don't appear to transform into anything at all.

    Long-term Transformers fans may notice more than a passing resemblance to Scraplets, however. :-)
  • Yeah, I exchanged a few emails with him about a year ago. It is a nice enough idea, but it is clear that he doesn't have much of a clue. He waffles on about his "fractal" operating system, and when you actually try to pin him down on what it actually does he just hits you with more waffle.

    --

  • No! (Score:1)

    by Sanity ( 1431 )
    You are wrong!

    --

  • Yes (Score:1)

    by Sanity ( 1431 )
    He is right!

    --

  • No (Score:1)

    by Sanity ( 1431 )
    Now way man. You are wrong

    --

  • Yes! (Score:1)

    by Sanity ( 1431 )
    Hey, man, you are wrong and he is right!

    --

  • Wouldn't that be:
    "Twinkle twinkle little bat, how I wonder what you're at, up above the world you fly, like a teatray in the sky."
    Sorry to be a pedant.

  • Anteater (Score:1)

    by Juju ( 1688 )
    Yeah, and Sony will also produce a modified Aibo with a vacuum cleaner to make it a anteater :)
  • Given the size and mass of these robots I can't really imagine how they're effectively shielding them against radiation, which will hose up most delicate control circuits.

    Also wouldn't the usual EM emissions of a nuclear plant or power plant interfere with the control and reporting mechanisms of these little bots?

    Finally, getting a significant lens aperture for them that controllers can use might also be a problem.
  • In fact, I've been reading it as free time allows for the last week or so. It's quite good, and exactly what I thought when I read this story.
  • "They also plan to develop robots with motors and problem-detecting sensors."

    Did anyone notice the above line from the Salon article? I guess what I am getting at is that this line seems to indicate that the devices the article is about aren't robots - how do you have a robot if it doesn't have motors or sensors? Most definitions of a true robot include a clause relating to the ability of the device in question to be able to sense as well as change its environment - without motors or sensors, how is it supposed to do this?
  • Sorry. I was thinking about not having to send shuttle astronauts on a space walk to fix every little loose screw. A [hypothetical] space station might need less on-board maintenace crew if they could automate some of the repairs. Less crew means less oxygen. I should have been more specific.

    Jpowers

  • Re:ick (Score:1)

    by Julz ( 9310 )
    Sounds like an even smaller version of robots in the movie Runaway with Tom Selleck
  • Yep, I guess it would.

    Teach me to rush things :)
  • This page distinctly reminds me of the fantastic AI-gone-bad movie Demon Seed (1977 starring Julie Christie?) where the AI Prometheus built a "fractal" robot build upon a pyramid structure. Maybe it was an inspiration?

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