
Microbots Are on Their Way - smb111
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/science/microbots-robots-silicon-wafer.html
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raybon
20 years ago, when I was a bright eyed graduate student, I was mesmerized by
MEMS (micro-electro mechanical systems), which promised similar revolution. I
learnt about 'artificial muscles', and MIT Technology Review even ran a cover
issue on how MEMS will revolutionize everything. This article could have been
written in the year 2000 except it would have mentioned MEMS then. Now there
is no mention of it. I'm older and saner now. Still feels very much a academic
pipe dream than real engineering. I dreamed of working with Kris Pister and
now he is 20 years older. Another young professor at UPenn and Cornell is
trying to get tenure....call me cynical but this too shall pass. Issues of
toxicity in human body etc are huge...

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Espressosaurus
MEMS have been much quieter in their influence as it turns out. Now they're in
everything with an IMU or accelerometer, especially including things like your
phone; they're in disposable pressure sensors; and they're in microphones[1].

They've revolutionized some parts of how we live our daily lives, though not
in the same way innovations like the car, airplane, computer, or cellphone
have.

I expect microbots will be similar. After a decade or two of hard work and
billions of dollars invested, they will quietly revolutionize some other small
parts of our lives. Meanwhile, the rest of the world moves on.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectromechanical_systems...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectromechanical_systems#Applications)

~~~
flyinglizard
MEMS is also used for laser beam steering (depth sensors, projectors),
oscillators and even loudspeakers. MEMS is truly a breakthrough where physics
meet electronics.

Commercially MEMS is also very interesting because it’s a branch of
semiconductor manufacturing which is dominated by different players compared
to the regular TSMC/Samsung/Intel trifecta.

~~~
mikeash
Some devices use MEMS oscillators instead of crystals, which has the bizarre
side effect of making them allergic to helium:
[https://ifixit.org/blog/11986/iphones-are-allergic-to-
helium...](https://ifixit.org/blog/11986/iphones-are-allergic-to-helium/)

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colordrops
I feel like I've been seeing stories like this, with accompanying microscopic
footage, for decades. Has anyone ever built anything more complex than a
simple actuator? These things seem to barely qualify as robots.

~~~
Hextinium
I think the main thing I always see with posts like these are that they always
say what could be done but with no plan or process to do any of it. The
problem with microbots seems to be a similar problem to spaceflight currently:
we can make it and its possible but no current commercial opportunities exist
to push the technology past the "we can do it" stage.

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skybrian
Well, spaceflight is a big industry though. Or do you mean human spaceflight?

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Hextinium
Anything outside of telecommunications or earth observation. Human spaceflight
is a different can of worms with the additional dilemma of that no large
hardware failures can occur. Rockets fail a lot, people dying is bad for PR,
and thus you need a really good reason to send a person. The thing then is
what do you do with people in space that makes enough money to warrant it?
Basically nothing. Thus the lack of any human spaceflight other than research
purposes.

~~~
opportune
I think theoretically, you could make money refining rare minerals from
asteroids (like platinum, gold, rare earths). The issue is that since the
startup cost is so high, the mission is very risky (conservatively, it would
probably cost in the 10s of billions to be able to refine anything at scale)
and 10s of billions worth of rare minerals won't stay worth 10s of billions
since the world only needs so much minerals - the price would fall
substantially.

I think the only thing really worth doing in space, economically speaking,
will be energy related. Maybe harvesting helium 3 will be lucrative. Maybe (I
doubt it) there will be a profitable way to harness solar energy - could be
more profitable if we can produce the panels in space by the asteroid they are
procured from, but then the issue is transmission.

Actually, there is another thing. I think space tourism could be lucrative.
Imagine if you set up a lunar colony for 20b that could house ~1k people with
about 200 permanent staff. If 800 people are paying $100k/week (plus cost of
transportation) to stay up there, you're making $4b per year. Personally if I
were worth in the ~10s of millions I would absolutely shell out $100k to spend
a week on the moon so I think this kind of thing could work

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RickSanchez2600
It is still only a playground for the rich and wealthy. The Space industry
needs to become like the Airline industry in minimizing the accidents and
making it safe and cheap enough for the average person to afford.

There are people who want to go into space to be like Captain Kirk or some
other scifi character. Some of them are rich or wealthy and can afford the
$100K a week on the Moon.

Thing is a moon-base has to avoid meteorite strikes and other hazards. If the
water or oxygen gets contaminated that's it for everyone.

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OrgNet
I really like the slaughterbots:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw)

~~~
User23
Interestingly, black powder era technology easily defeats "stochastic motion."
It's called a shotgun.

~~~
OrgNet
Can you defend yourself from a swarm of 10 coming from all directions at
30mph?

~~~
User23
With 10 shotguns using the same AI? Why not?

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pazimzadeh
This is fantastic, but another approach would be to use the things that are
already small and learn how they work, and then maybe reprogram them (i.e.
bacteria).

Also, as Richard Feynman pointed out
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eRCygdW--
c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eRCygdW--c)) at small scales water is
thick like honey so it's probably more efficient to use a rotating turbine
mechanism (i.e. flagella) for propulsion rather than trying to shrink paddles
down to micron sizes.

And almost foreign material that you put in your body will eventually be
covered in bacterial biofilms. So might as well learn how to program and
control the bacteria in the first place.

~~~
dmix
From the article:

> Challenges remain. For robots injected into the brain, lasers would not work
> as the power source. (Dr. Miskin said magnetic fields might be an
> alternative.) He wants to make other robots swim rather than crawl. (For
> tiny machines, swimming can be arduous as water becomes viscous, like
> honey.).

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Causality1
I feel like I've been reading this article every five years since 1990.

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_bxg1
I wonder what kind of "brain" would even be possible to put in a robot this
small, given the physical limit we're approaching. Could limit the potential
for certain dystopian scenarios.

~~~
leggomylibro
The ones in the article look like they're basically photocells which get
activated by lasers to move the 'legs'.

At that scale, you probably couldn't have much battery power either. Maybe
it'd be possible to power a small microcontroller off of radio signals which
also send instructions. They wouldn't need to be very "smart" as long as
something else in the room was, like a phone or router or something.

~~~
_nalply
When I looked at the animated picture I wondered about the flashing dots on
the circuit till I realized that these are probably reflections of the laser
beams directed onto the microbot.

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danmaz74
This looks like the most important point:

> Dr. Miskin worked around the power conundrum by leaving out the batteries.
> Instead, he powers the robots by shining lasers on tiny solar panels on
> their backs

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ducttape12
I've played the Metal Gear Solid games enough to know the crazy possibilities
of nano machines.

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DEADBEEFC0FFEE
"could one day", beware these three word in a title.

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higgy
I can't tell if it's cute or absolutely terrifying.

~~~
cellular
Meanwhile, [https://youtu.be/vOLvFhdkLmA](https://youtu.be/vOLvFhdkLmA)

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mensetmanusman
Flying microdrones have obvious applications (entertainment, replacing
fireworks, on demand traffic guidance, etc.), but ground based versions are a
mystery to me...

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User23
Does anyone else look at the microbot next to the paramecium and see an Atari
sprite next to a photograph?

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nixarian
Or maybe we could inject them into the brain, and then could 'override basic
autonomic function. Maybe we could use this on a recently dead body and it
could do simple things, like amble around, maybe grab things, or bite.

