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"I never saw why I had to give up science in order to write, or the other way around, so I didn't!"
- Gregory Benford
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| Dog Pod Grid | ||
| A swarm of quasi-independent aerostatic devices. |
The reason for including this entry, as well as one for aerostat, is that these machines are capable of communicating with each other. This communication allows them to coordinate their movements.
| Atlantis/Shanghai occupied the loftiest ninety percent of New Chusan's land area - an inner plateau about a mile above sea level, where the air was cooler and cleaner. Parts of it were marked off with a lovely wrought-iron fence, but the real border was defended by something called the dog pod grid - a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats... These pods were programmed to hang in space in a hexagonal grid pattern about ten centimeters apart near the ground (close enough to stop a dog but not a cat, hence "dog pods") and spaced wider as they got higher. |
| Technovelgy from The Diamond Age,
by Neal Stephenson. Published by Bantam Books in 1995 Additional resources -
|
Together, they form a protective swarm.
In nature, bees swarm for a purpose; an ageing queen, overcrowding, poor ventilation in the hive. In flight, bee swarms approximate the kind of distance between individuals shown in a dog pod grid, with several thousand individuals spread through a volume the size of a minivan, flying together. However, when a bee swarm settles, the individuals congregate in a dense volume roughly the size of a football.
"Guard" bees don't fly around the hive to protect it; they stand guard in an aggressive stance at the entrance to the hive, checking individuals upon entry.
Compare to the pacification drones from The Breach (2020) by Matt Hill, the scuttle-bot from Hella (2020) by David Gerrold and the robot snake spy from Mariposa (2009) by Greg Bear.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Diamond Age
More Ideas
and Technology by Neal Stephenson
Tech news articles related to The Diamond Age
Tech news articles related to works by Neal Stephenson
Dog Pod Grid-related
news articles:
- COTS Scout: Team Building Robot
- Nano Quadrotors Form Stephenson's Dog Pod Grid
- Autonomous UAV Surveillance Swarm
- Flyfire Micro-Helicopter Display
- Improve MAVs By Studying Bees In Flight
- Largest Micro-Drone Swarm Release Successful
- Drone Catches Drone! In Japan
- Biggest Drone Swarm Sets World Record
- Drone 100, Coordinated Drone Performance Team
- China's Drone Fleet Flies In Formation
- Crazyflie Drone Swarm Technology
- Slaughterbot AI KIller Quadcopter Drones
- Poland Starts With 1000 Warmate 'Suicide Drones'
- We Need To Build Anti-Drone Systems For Civilian Spaces
| Holobox? Who Doesn't Want A Home Hologram? |
| EBS-260 Handjet Free Hand Dot Matrix Printer |
| CD, DVD Bit Rot And PKD's Civic Notification Distorter |
| Zoom Education Idea Is 100 Years Old |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
