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"The world is really so surreal these days that it's necessary for us to blunt it somehow in order to stay sane. The artist functions to short-circuit the buffering mechanism, so that people can occasionally perceive the weirdness of things as they are."
- William Gibson
 |
| Dustmice | ||
| Tiny robotic sensors that police could set loose in a crime scene, looking for tiny clues. |
I really like the name for these items; it has a sort of Disney quality that contrasts nicely with their intended use. They do not seem to be nanotechnology, but they are very small robots indeed.
| A radio assayer hung from the track mounted in the apartment ceiling, having replaced the sniffer. Dustmice pushed through the cold stiff tendrils of once live carpet searching it for skin flakes and other debris trapped in the carpet's custom digestion. |
| From Queen of Angels,
by Greg Bear. Published by Warner Books in 1990 Additional resources -
|
I'm sure that these little robots would be very thorough; I also think that if they went across the floor in my house (after two kids), the little dustmice would run screaming out the door. And if they screamed, would their little tiny voices sound like Bob Newhart and Zsa Zsa Gabor, like in The Rescuers? Just wondering.
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratory succeeded in creating what is described as "the smallest autonomous untethered robot every created." It is a one quarter of an inch cube weighing less than an ounce. It really does turn on a dime (and parks on a nickel). Shown below is a parked bot:
Read the news release at Smallest Mini-Robot. The robots are fabricated using stereolithography; read more about that on the entry for naonfax, from All Tomorrow's Parties, by William Gibson.
Take a look at the grandparents of these little guys - the robot mice from Ray Bradbury's 1950 short story There Will Come Soft Rains.
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Dustmice-related
news articles:
- Micromouse Robot Builders Seek The Brass Cheese
| Super Ball Bot Tensegrity Robot For Solar System Exploration |
| Robot Brains Improved By Darwinian Evolution |
| Autonomous Cars Will Own Themselves |
| ROBEAR Nursing Care Robot |
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'Each leg in turn acted as a pivot around which the creature whirled its body...'
'The new species. Evolution. The race to come after man.'
'When you buy one of them, you don't need to tie up to an electric outlet.'
'Solved the problem to some extent by devising rigid metallic clothing...'
'The robot drew his cab up before Eric's modest six-room bungalow.'
