Elaboration...grover_rover2kNovember 29 2006, 08:35:51 UTC
Hrm, not sure what you mean by "actual physical thingie"... Is that a technical term? ;)
The principal of the experiment is based on the fact that small organisms with limited intellectual capability can band together to form entities that can accomplish tasks far more complex than each individual could possibly achieve. The best example for this is ants: a single ant is a rather stupid creature which, if left to its own devices, will run around randomly and croak of starvation. However, if you examine a colony of ants as a whole, they are able to scour and gather food, build anthills, protect their eggs in case of an intrusion. Ants will fight other ants in "colony wars", and they will do so as a colony.
What I gather from the article is that researchers have developed three types of robot with complimentary functions and simple objectives. This increases the functionality of the swarm as a whole. Also, consider this: if a single robot gets broken, the entity is broken. If a single robot in a swarmanoid gets broken, the impact on the swarmanoid is small.
Re: Elaboration...empress_juleNovember 29 2006, 15:48:32 UTC
Creepy- it's like the twilight zone episode where the women is fighting the invasion of all of the little robots in her house. They keep shooting her and it's a war till the end when we realize/Rod Searling tells us that the robots are the actual humans and she is the giant, lol~
Re: Elaboration...grover_rover2kNovember 29 2006, 16:08:53 UTC
You know, I don't think I've ever seen an episode of twilight zone in my life... :-P
I've seen a few episodes of -- what was it, Goosebumps? But as I understand it, that's no match for the Twilight Zone...
What I find most interesting in the episode you described is that we are made to relate to the giant woman rather than the humans... One scene that creeped me out is in MIB: you know how there's this entire galaxy that fits in a marble on the collar of that cat? In the end, the camera zooms out further and further until you see our universe, which is also in a marble... It is not impossible that everything we know and theorize about is a subset of something so much larger. How big does it get? How small does it get? Is there a limit? Is there a link between all these universes, kind of like a pointer in C++?
Re: Elaboration...mousecatfishNovember 29 2006, 17:55:04 UTC
"actual physical thingie" is a technical term, yes. absolutely. if it wasn't before, it is now.
ants sound much more interesting now than before. hmm. i like the image of colony wars. do they wear colors and fly flags and ride steeds? eh, didn't think so.
so.. these are bitty 'bots?
swarmanoid. remind me to see if that one's made it into webster's complete yet.
Re: Elaboration...mousecatfishNovember 29 2006, 18:04:08 UTC
bitty bots! i like that. they can come and hang out at the apartment, maybe collect dust balls or something, so long as they don't try to kill us in our sleep. maybe baby mac can lead them.
The principal of the experiment is based on the fact that small organisms with limited intellectual capability can band together to form entities that can accomplish tasks far more complex than each individual could possibly achieve. The best example for this is ants: a single ant is a rather stupid creature which, if left to its own devices, will run around randomly and croak of starvation. However, if you examine a colony of ants as a whole, they are able to scour and gather food, build anthills, protect their eggs in case of an intrusion. Ants will fight other ants in "colony wars", and they will do so as a colony.
What I gather from the article is that researchers have developed three types of robot with complimentary functions and simple objectives. This increases the functionality of the swarm as a whole. Also, consider this: if a single robot gets broken, the entity is broken. If a single robot in a swarmanoid gets broken, the impact on the swarmanoid is small.
And that's all I have to say about that ;)
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I've seen a few episodes of -- what was it, Goosebumps? But as I understand it, that's no match for the Twilight Zone...
What I find most interesting in the episode you described is that we are made to relate to the giant woman rather than the humans... One scene that creeped me out is in MIB: you know how there's this entire galaxy that fits in a marble on the collar of that cat? In the end, the camera zooms out further and further until you see our universe, which is also in a marble... It is not impossible that everything we know and theorize about is a subset of something so much larger. How big does it get? How small does it get? Is there a limit? Is there a link between all these universes, kind of like a pointer in C++?
Freaky...
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ants sound much more interesting now than before. hmm. i like the image of colony wars. do they wear colors and fly flags and ride steeds? eh, didn't think so.
so.. these are bitty 'bots?
swarmanoid. remind me to see if that one's made it into webster's complete yet.
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