Swarm Robot Immune System?

schliz writes "Researchers are investigating large swarms of up to 10,000 miniature robots which can work together to form a single, artificial life form. A resulting artificial immune system is expected to be able to detect faults and make recommendations to a high-level control system about corrective action — much like how a person's natural immune system is able to cope with unfamiliar pathogens."

And this is different

[name*censored*]

From the internet's massively redundant routing system how? After all, this idea isn't talking about self-REPAIRING robots, simply robots that route around problem areas. Seems like a hardware mini-internet to me. Cool idea, but hardly original.

Re:Don't they know they are unstoppable?

[txoof]

What facility does this unstoppable robot force have for creating more of its self? Did you read the article? Even a quick skimming mentions using swarm technology to solve problems, not to replicate. Just because there are thousands of problem solving robots doesn't imply that they will suddenly decide to begin to evolve and replicate.

Solving problems en mass is one thing, spontaneously developing the ability to replicate is completely another. Even if a snake robot swarm, unleashed into a collapsed building to find and help survivors, spontaneously decided to start replicating, where would it find the materials to do so? I'm pretty sure most collapsed buildings are short on snake robot parts.

This idea is related to Rodney Brooks [mit.edu] "Fast Cheap and Out of Control" idea. Instead of having one super expensive robot that symbolically processes the world around it and then interacts with it, you have thousands of fast, cheap and barely controlled robots that do the same task as one big by working together and each supplying one small piece of functionality such as sensing, moving or manipulating. Nothing about this implies that they will suddenly begin to replicate.

If, at some point in the future, we develop the ability build robots that can use raw materials to create more of themselves, unleashing thousands of them with no direct control mechanism would probably be a bad idea. Until then, there's not much to worry about unless you work for FOX news and need a SCARY and SENSATIONAL headline for the hour.

Re:Don't they know they are unstoppable?

[matt4077]

I like Crichton, but Prey is probably the worst of all his books, It's junk science in the beginning and lame action afterwards. I know that describes pretty much all Crichton books, but others like Jurassic Park simply were better in both regards.

Re:Don't they know they are unstoppable?

[NetSettler]

If, at some point in the future, we develop the ability build robots that can use raw materials to create more of themselves, unleashing thousands of them with no direct control mechanism would probably be a bad idea. Until then, there's not much to worry about unless you work for FOX news and need a SCARY and SENSATIONAL headline for the hour.

We don't have reason to worry about robots taking over the world until then, yes. But the intermediate ground is that research in this area is only rarely going to be used for things like earthquake recovery. It's going to be very expensive to make so many machines at all, at first, and so will not be vacuuming the floor in your house. The first applications will be funded by the military, and all in the name of protecting us.

The problem is that the military (of whatever country) is always indulging the illusion that they have to have it because the other guy will eventually have it, while all the while leaking, in one way or another, the information. So they can end up starting the problem they fear. Even just putting fear into the enemy (or potential enemy) that "we" will have it and "they" won't means "we" have to worry about defense against it since "we" have signaled to "them" an interest in that area and now must protect the intellectual space. (I've tried to word the "we"/"them" neutrally so it reads as well for the US as abroad, in part because this research is being done abroad. The issues are no less relevant in any country.)

The practical truth is that the world is not suffering from the absence of swarms (dare I say "gangs") of swarmbots. This is push technology looking for a market, and with the military and malware markets being the two obvious prime candidates, which is not comforting, at least to me.

I'm not intending to advocate outright alarm. I'm reacting to a statement that appears to say that it's ok to ignore this as a problem for now. I don't think the choice is as binary as all that. Technology does not, itself, cause social problems. But that is not license to assume that no problems will result that are enabled by technology. If there can be social impact of technology, what causes the problem is the failure to track and respond to the social implications, and the assumption that society will (or even can) just automatically "keep up" and "be ready". I'm not big on those stupid headlines either, but then, I wish the public could hear a calm headline and still be interested enough to discuss something. The public doesn't need to panic, and yet it probably does need to read the story and listen and do a little discussing.