Dartmouth Researchers Build World's Smallest Mobile Robot

Science Daily ^ | 2005-09-16

[sourcery]

[RadioAstronomer]

ping

[sourcery]

ping

[Egon]

"...At very small scales, this machine is surprisingly fast."

At very small scales, so am I.

[Kevin OMalley]

Fascinating. Bump for later reading.

[Antonello]

"When we say 'controllable,' it means it's like a car; you can steer it anywhere on a flat surface, and drive it wherever you want to go.

Yeah, but it sucks as far as legroom goes...

[RightWhale]

Something that small might be able to travel to outer space on its own, and then go someplace, the moon or an asteroid, and then start terraforming or mining. It's all in the programming.

[frankjr]

"Danger! Danger! Small robots are bad!"

[seawolf101]

That explains the voices that I hear. It's really those little robots with loudspeakers.

[TXnMA]

Something that small might be able to travel to outer space on its own, and then go someplace, the moon or an asteroid, and then start terraforming or mining. It's all in the programming..

Nope, it's all in the special, micro-addressable substrate on which it moves. It has no capability of moving through free space.

It may not be "tethered", but it is confined to the equivalent of two-dimensional "rails"...

Can't help but wonder just how large that patterned substrate really is. I would be surprised to learn that it is larger than one cm square.

[RightWhale]

Small stuff can be buoyant and tend to higher elevations if the wind is right. Probably 20 miles is the maximum that could be expected from buoyancy and then another mechanism would need to kick in. It would take a while for a microbot to gain enough speed to arrive at orbit. In the meantime it would have to float. Whether atmospheric drag can be overcome this way might be an interesting exercise for an enterprising aeronautical engineering student. I don't know, but it seems like there might be a way.

[Young Werther]

The Demobots will go ballistic when they find that the Dartmouth 'bots have the visage of Abraham Lincoln!!

Once again the 'Pubs show the way, and according to the picture it's "Eyes Right!!!"

[elfman2]

The value of these little things are not to send them out into space. They offer no advantage for that. Size is not the limitation in space travel. Their advantage is to have them perform tasks within a larger body, a mechanical or human body.

[RightWhale]

True. However, we need a way to get out into space at low or zero cost.

[elfman2]

" True. However, we need a way to get out into space at low or zero cost."

Not really. That’s not the bottle neck. No sense imposing the limitations intrinsic to micobots in order to have hope that some escape into space.

[RightWhale]

Hams, RC airplane hobbyists, others who like to build things should wonder why they can't get their creations into space just by going out into the yard and letting them go. No muss, no fuss, no smoke and fire, just up and away.

[elfman2]

I don’t want to discourage creativity. For every 1000 seemingly bad ideas, one turns out to be brilliant. Maybe yours is the one ;^) Regards.

[Syntyr]

Oh crud next thing you know these things will be back...

[Syntyr]

Oh crud next thing you know these things will be back... Well it worked in Preview mode :(

[sourcery]

I see the picture just fine.

So, what is that?