Researchers at Stanford hoped to replicate ants' ability to work together to haul very heavy objects with the help of μTug minibots. In the experiments, robots that jump or walk with a quick, jerky force were quickly determined to be inefficient in groups, while the μTugs won out due to the longer duration of pulling force they were able to create with their tiny winches (as in tug of war). Not only could the μTugs mimic ants through teamwork, but they anchored themselves to the ground with an adhesive borrowed from gecko toes. http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/03/watch-100-grams-of-robot-pull-1800-kilograms-of-car/
Reminds me of how trains get started: they back up a few feet to put slack in the couplers; then when they start forward, they're only starting one car at a time.
Gives me the shudders. Might look cute in that vid, but again, where are such efforts really headed? My bet US military has it's octopus fingers in all such pies - including those amazing demos of drone swarms that work as a team. So many neat but not so cute ways to kill and assassinate are prepping for lab-to-field applications. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
That's cool. But I honestly don't believe the future is in robotics. No, the future belongs to biotechnology. Why build a machine when you can create something much more reliable? I was talking with a co-working about planned missions to Mars--it seems they want to send robots in advance to build environments for humans. Now, as an example, we've been working with a cnc machine that seems to have new bugs every night. Without human intervention, I don't see machines filling the void. With biotech we could create living machines that could be adapted, potentially, to any environment where needed. They could be specialized for any specific purpose, whether that be Mars or elsewhere. That's where the future resides. If I had the money, I would be pumping it into biotech, where the future advancements will come.
