Last week, while everyone got very excited about those EcoBe! robots, something more interesting was happening and very few people paid any attention. I think the only reason it was ignored is because there was no cute little picture. That’s why I put a picture here. It has nothing to do with the story except to show the people at Micron something about marketing robots. T & A stupid.
The Micron Project ran out of money. Unfortunately it ran out of money before reaching its goal of creating teamworking robots but it did manage to develop “several tools, including micromanipulators, an atomic force microscope (AFM) probe, and a precise “syringe chip” for injecting cells. But they did not achieve the teamwork goal — they ran out of time and money before getting more than one of a handful of prototypes working perfectly.”
“It looks like they’ve made a great amount of progress. They’re pretty sophisticated robots,” says Ron Fearing, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley, who is also developing tiny robots. “It will start to be really interesting when they get dozens of robots working together,” he says. “But it’s a pretty impressive accomplishment just having a couple of those things working.”
I’ll say. It’s so much better than those EcoBe!s who just move around and are made out of watch parts. It makes those things look like what they are: Toys.
2 comments
sublime
March 10, 2006 at 3:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
hawtness! roof roof!
Grumpy Owl
March 10, 2006 at 4:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Nice gams.