Darpa Wants Insect-Scale Robots for a Micro-Olympics | Hacker News Reader

Darpa Wants Insect-Scale Robots for a Micro-Olympics

spectrum.ieee.org

148 pointsrobg49 comments

Just happen to watch rubber band-powered planes video. Penny planes are 3.5 grams and Peanut planes are 8 grams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y22mV2smkA

A world I never knew existed. That rubberband talk was crazy.

Maxfliart's videos of these are particularly beautiful https://youtu.be/MOurDGVitgQ

Here’s another one - gliders that can reach 835 kmh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv7-YM4wno8

Whoa, I just landed on that very video an hour ago, after watching The Slingshot Guy's CSI video, then his aircraft carrier video, then three paper airplane videos, then two balsa airplane videos, then a South American homemade card airplane video, and then two rubber band airplane videos.

I tapped your link with no idea I was about to rewatch a video I just felt like I dug halfway through YouTube to find. That was really weird.

Small scaled robots are so much more amazing and powerful (and dangerous) than large ones. Small robots can go anywhere. They can also cluster and swarm and be more difficult to take down. Frankly, I'm always surprised that the military spends so much time making robots that look like humans or dogs or the like, when both individual and swarms on nano robots seem so much more powerful.

I immediately thought of the "Hated in the Nation" episode of Black Mirror.

Prey by Michael Chrichton is a nice predecessor of this as well.

Never fear, they’re working on those, too. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a24675/pe...

>Yesterday, DARPA announced a new program called SHRIMP: SHort-Range Independent Microrobotic Platforms.

When did DARPA turn into a company from the Fallout universe?

DARPA as the cause of the fallout universe.

Related: Rolls-Royce's "cockroach" inspection robots. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-19/cockroach...

The possibility to do great harm with robot swarms is real; load them with a nerve agent or explosive and you have instant mayhem that is almost unstoppable.

I hope we will come up with some way to control/disable these things, or we may end up with a few psychopaths terrorizing entire cities.

Yes, I came here to say that before anyone gets excited about this, understand that the technology will be weaponized. So if you were unhappy about your company providing administrative software to ICE or the Border Patrol, think twice before lending your talents to this sort of thing.

Sounds like chemical weapons which are forbidden in modern warfare, AFAIK. You don't really need robot swarms to deliver toxic substances, there are plenty of simpler ways.

Those psychopaths already have the capability to terrorize entire cities. And they don't do it. Everyone you pass on the street every day could kill you easily before anyone could do anything to stop them. But it's not something you have to worry about. Because people mostly aren't willing to do harm to others. And for no other reason. Police and most other measures only have effect afterwards, and deterrence doesn't work. The moral sense of those around you is what protects you, and always has.

@dang - Why the title change here? The "Olympic-themed competitions" were the most interesting thing here to me, given DARPA's success with previous competitions and spurring innovations.

Someone suggested this to me as a possibility. Imagine a swarm of bugs with nothing more than a small amount of poison as a payload and an injector of kinds. Kind of scary to think about.

You don't even need an injection mechanism.

Imagine one depositing a contact poison briefly before the target makes contact with an object.

I guess we'll all need >= 8 K surveillance footage, to try to analyze the vector.

Or 3g of shaped explosives.

https://youtu.be/HipTO_7mUOw?t=67

and with decentralized control

As a kid, the acid spewing mechanical spiders in Runaway [0] always really terrified me.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088024/

Yeah - this is scary. They would be mostly useful in targeted assassinations. This is a big political change. In the future you'll not need much army to control a remote government - just insect robots to kill the officials. I guess it will soon be very dangerous to be a politician.

Think about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fide...

Or about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_...

It is double scary because they can easily be made untraceable. Like in that short story by Philip Dick that I forgot the title again.

Especially if they target people by race.

Or, armed with a small wireless mic and/or camera, crawling on the windowsill of every politician, snuggling behind their lapels, hanging off the back of their shirt. Every word they say and every thing they do open to public scrutiny...

This will eventually become utility fog. Billions of billions of nanobots that can cooperate and assemble autonomously. It will fundamentally be magic. Rajaniemi's "Flower Prince" novels include lots of utility fog. Also, I think, Morgan's "Land Fit for Heroes" novels, but way far in the future, after the technology's been forgotten, so people see it as magic.

Then civilization will destroy itself and when it starts to rekindle, there will be rumors and tales of forgotten magic and there will be those that denounce such magic and reinvent science all over again, only to recreate said magic hundreds of years later.

I hope the program manager is invited to the Voices from DARPA podcast.

https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/podcast

Always worth a listen. (Though I always feel like a not-so-smart underachiever after listening.)

That’s really neat. I don’t know anything about the field —- how accessible is this type of contest to small teams of advanced hobbyists? Are we going to see mostly companies with advanced equipment competing? I’m curious about the competitive landscape.

Seems like if your bot can or could meet the expectations of the challenge(s) the contest is open to you.

I'd be wary of signing anything to compete though.

Well my bots are all software and they’re very bad at piling rocks. I’m just curious what the hobbyists who are in this space think of the competition, and whether they can be competitive.

Abstracts are due less than a month after the initial announcement of the program. Doesn't that limit it to entities which are already pretty far along?

Does anyone know why these events are focused on physical performance? It seems like gathering data (the "search" portion previously discussed) would be more focused on data collection rather than moving objects, jumping, etc. Before seeing the events I was imagining something like move 50 meters while transmitting video, or transmit temperature data while flying for 5 meters.

I always imagined that those robots would be ideal for spying on people.

At least it would make targeted spying better, and might reduce the need for the NSA to capture internet traffic.

I feel like I've seen 3 or 4 big interesting DARPA initiatives announced in the last week or so. Is something going on or is it just a coincidence?

Possibly related to Russia’s recent claims about advancements in military tech http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/22270/russia-releases-v...

Most of those were just old weapons systems retrofitted for air launch.

Technology is often considered neutral. It represents progress through equal benefits to all.

However, internet tech, has shown asymmetric benefits. Those with access to information individuals don't have, such as Cambridge Analytica, and therefore foreign governments, have benefited more than individuals.

Before yielding to the dopaminergic amazement of this insect-robot technology, how about your thoughts on how this will affect and benefit those with evil intentions, such as foreign governments, vs. everyday people, such as facebook users?

Technology and science are only neutral in theory.

The potential abuses of this type of technology when it is weaponized (it really is a question of when and not if) I think far outweighs the potential benefits.

Unfortunately, and I hate to say it, it is basically inevitable. Even if DARPA does not initiate this type of research, it is a certainty that China will, if they are not already.

Espionage is, to me, the most obvious use.

That and assassinations.

Why would someone who controlled this technology practice only notable killings?

Fair point, a poor choice of words on my part there.

thanks, banksy

Often considered neutral? I'm unsure what you mean here, isn't the conceit of technology that it provides a competitive advantage? That strikes me as the opposite of equality.

Are there any research papers pertaining to this program? Thanks :)

Probably all secret

What’s their policy on doping?

For those confused, title was changed from something about "tiny robot Olympics."

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