Harvard boffins cause buzz with robot bee Instead of building a robot, why not print it? That’s more-or-less the approach demonstrated by Harvard engineers with an ingenious and attention-grabbing miniature robot bee. The process, which allows fixed and flexible joints to be created by layering materials in fabrication rather than assembling them, and allowing them to …
Why do they pronounce "mirror" as "mrrrr", that girl on Mythbusters said it about 5 times in a row a few days ago, really annoying. Or President Bush saying "tourists" when he was talking about Terrorists!
I dont mind them saying aluminum or "fall" for autumn and lots of others as they were the original English words, but when they mangle the pronunciation of words that are used on both sides of the pond - annoying.
Well, "Michael" and "Crichton's" (the possessive form of "Crichton") may be -- in the vernacular of my fifth-grade English teacher -- "proper names," but they *are* words, nonetheless... :-)
Point taken regarding the "Abysmally Bad Writing," though. I have to admit that even though I am a Crichton fan, "Prey" did manage to cross the lower borders of absurdity on a fairly regular basis...
Yes, good point, we can build robots all we want but they must have a purpose i.e. be driven to an objective to be truly autonomous.
In nature bees act for the benefit of the colony, ultimately to perpetuate the species. A side effect of their existence is interaction with other species in a carefully balanced ecosystem, but they don't know this. All they know is 'get nectar, protect colony', and then they just get on with it without any other intervention.
How will be imbue 'purpose' into robo-bees?
You're thinking of wasps. Bees wouldn't be interested in barbecues, being vegetarians (nectar, pollen, propolis - all plant products). Wasps on the other hand are second hand carnivores, as they feed their larvae meat, which in turn secrete sugar syrup which the adults use as their energy source. Also wasps use their sting to hunt, so they are naturally more aggressive, and able to sting without dying (bee stings are barbed, and stinging pulls their guts out, while wasp stings are smooth, so it can fly away and come back for another go later)...
I'm reminded of Simon Bovey's Afternoon Play Hivemind. Several years into the future, the extinction of the bee in Britain has meant that people need to manually pollinate crops until some company comes up with an artificial bee.
All is well, until a number of dead mice and birds are found in that field...
Worth a listen if you can track down a copy.
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