Siemens Now Commands An Army Of Spider Robots (dailydot.com) 119
An anonymous reader quotes this article about Siemens' army of autonomous spider robots -- each one the size of a microwave, communicating with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to create "a collaborative mind":
It's expensive to build an automated factory, and even more pricey to repurpose one. German manufacturing giant Siemens wants that to change, and they've developed an army of robot spiders to make it happen. Utilizing what Siemens calls "mobile manufacturing", researchers in Princeton, New Jersey have built prototype spider-bots that work together to 3D print structures and parts in real time.
Siemens hopes to build even larger spider robots than can weld cars.
Siemens hopes to build even larger spider robots than can weld cars.
calculating (Score:5, Funny)
Like Colbert said, there is nothing more reassuring than a calculating German man talking about controlling an army of spider robots....
Re:calculating (Score:5, Funny)
Plus, we can thank Stargate for telling us about how well this idea goes [wikia.com]. Hint: not well.
Re: calculating (Score:4, Interesting)
They're not really spiders though: they seem to have only six legs. Calling them ants would be more appropriate.
From a behavioral point of view, too: spiders are solitary, and many species just sit still 95% of the time. Tarantulas are about the most boring pets you can have. Ants, on the other hand, hardly ever sit still and work in groups.
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Great, now we're really going to need a school for ants. [pinimg.com]
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I don't think your masturbation habits will be a threat to bitches anywhere.
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I sure hope Siemens has learned its lesson after Stuxnet, or the next botnet could become very frightning indeed!
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Yes, because science fiction is always predictive, yes? One thing missing in the replicators story trajectory was how they got their energy to be autonomous. The Big Bugs always hooked into a power main somewhere. The little one miraculously ran, and ran, and ran...even the Energizer Bunny was jealous. Also, the joints didn't need any external "tendons" to move, they didn't contain small motors either. See, anything is possible, just close your eyes and click your red slippers together.
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I think these are closer to the spiders in the Tom Selleck movie Runaway.
"In the near future, a police officer specializes in malfunctioning robots. When a robot turns out to have been programmed to kill, he begins to uncover a homicidal plot to create killer robots... and his son becomes a target."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088024/
Re:calculating (Score:5, Interesting)
Is 'microwave' the new international unit of measure?
Does it refer to ovens or waves of electromagnetic radiation in the 3GHz range? I think the distinction might be important.
Re:calculating (Score:4, Funny)
Is 'microwave' the new international unit of measure?
Does it refer to ovens or waves of electromagnetic radiation in the 3GHz range? I think the distinction might be important.
This was my first thought too. Further research revealed the reference is to the little wave the Queen of England does.
Re: calculating (Score:1)
Nobody knows the size of a breadbox
Re: calculating (Score:1)
It's sad to see a tech site using language so loosely. The EM radiation came to mind first and then I thought that's silly, microwaves are tiny, how would they make robots that small? Then I remembered nanobots - they must be a thousand times smaller than microwaves, so maybe they could. However, Wikipedia says that microwaves have "wavelengths ranging from one meter to one millimeter" so they are a) much bigger than their name might imply and b) not much good as a unit of measurement.
Microwave ovens it
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The editors know that Slashdotters can't understand metric, so they opted for the absence of any usable metric at all my
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Siemens may be good engineers but they can't code worth anything. These robots will be out with an out of cards error in no time.
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Wow, haven't seen **that** error in a long time. Had completely forgotten about it.
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I get that on one of my workplace hosted software system from Siemens.
I also get the too many items in the stack.
There newer stuff they made isn't that much better they just learned a few years ago about activeX
So, if your career plan is to retool robots. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
It is time to start looking for something else . . . oh, those jobs are gone too. . .
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Yeah, isn't it awesome???
The robots will do all our work. All of it. We will lounge around eating the food they grow for us in the houses they build for us using the electricity they generate for us and engaging in the entertainments they create for us.
There may be a bit of social friction during the transition, of course. But the A.I. will help us through that.
Re: So, if your career plan is to retool robots. . (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, just like when new medicines come out, everyone can easily afford them, and we're all healthy.
Oh wait, forgot we live in a society based on making money. The rich will get your future, everyone else will get fucked.
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Universal Basic Income is starting to become more and more popular and, against all odds, is even getting implemented in a few countries. That ought to make the transition a bit easier: in the beginning people will still have to work quite a bit to be above the minimum standard, but after a while when there are less and less jobs, the new normal will be basic income plus a part time job here and there, and plenty of free time. You'll have all you need, and work to get a few extra things.
We're not quite ther
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The thing I find most exciting about UBI is actually the potential abolishment of the minimum wage. Since nobody is "forced to work" then we can assume that they choose the jobs they do because they find the rewards (financial and otherwise) competitive. Cleaning toilets at WalMart will have to pay real money, because who would choose to do that if it didn't?
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Unfortunately health care will be many times more expensive than anyone can afford with just UBI so they will still have to work and companies will still take advantage of them.
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In (most) first world countries healthcare is already taken into consideration, so that's not a problem.
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Well, I would not call countries "first world" :D if they have no proper health care in the first place ...
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That does not make any sesnse.
Why should Prices for health care change just because people receive UBI instead (or in addition to) of income? Espcially in countries where the amount you pay for health care is set by the government (e.g. Germany) or health care is financed via taxes (e.g. Denmark).
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I was thinking of the US where even with insurance if you have any kind of long term illness it will be the largest expense you pay often many times all of your other life long expenses combined.
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Unfortunately health care will be many times more expensive than anyone can afford with just UBI
Interestingly, even in countries with national health where you don't get rich being a doctor, you still have people becoming doctors. And without as much profit motive, perhaps we could get rid of the AMA. Big Pharma also does a lot less damage in countries with national health, where they don't have the assistance of a massive and entrenched health insurance industry. There's a lot of waste in the current system that can be cut out completely.
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Waste? You haven't begun to see waste and inefficiency until you've seen the inside workings of an insurance company. By all the gods above and below, one of our customers actually had a position called "Software Archivist" who made us: 1) burn to CD a 60 mb program that was only available for download, 2) forge an official-looking label with the manufacturer's logo on it for the CD and jewel case, 3) rip another program that came on DVD onto 18 CDs since that was his only official archival medium, 4) for
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where you don't get rich being a doctor, you still have people becoming doctors.
But not the same people. I'd really like the smartest guy to be my heart surgeon, not the software developer working next to me.
Big Pharma also does a lot less damage in countries with national health, where they don't have the assistance of a massive and entrenched health insurance industry.
If you don't want any future wonder drugs, feel free to abolish the incentive to spend a fortune researching them.
We get it, you think "profit" is a bad word.
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where you don't get rich being a doctor, you still have people becoming doctors.
But not the same people. I'd really like the smartest guy to be my heart surgeon, not the software developer working next to me.
Thanks to the AMA and Big Pharma, that's not what you have. What you have is the most financially motivated guy. Someone who could have been a great heart surgeon but a crappy ER doc failed at that point. Someone else who could have been a great heart surgeon didn't become one because the AMA has basically succeeded in capping the number of people who become a doctor each year, to keep the supply down and wages up.
What you really want is not just the smartest guy, although that's a plus, but also the guy wh
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where you don't get rich being a doctor, you still have people becoming doctors.
But not the same people. I'd really like the smartest guy to be my heart surgeon, not the software developer working next to me.
If you had said "brain surgeon", I would have pointed towards Ben Carson, and the argument about smart people becoming doctors in the US to get rich would have vanished in thin air.
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Except in the UK were doctors earn a very good wage, sure they don't get paid a million a year each but that's to be expected.
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Universal Basic Income is starting to become more and more popular and, against all odds, is even getting implemented in a few countries.
Really? Where? I haven't heard about that. Cuba has something like a universal basic income. It's just very small (think like $2-3 USD) and consists of food like rice and beans and some basic 'necessities' like the occasional toothbrush.
People will no longer be forced to take that 9 to 5 day job to work their ass off, they can easily quit without losing their UBI, work a few days here and there without extra administration. The labour market will change quite drastically.
TAINSTAFL. Your dream of a place where almost no one does any work is a reality already in some countries. The result is anything but utopia.
I think we need to get to the technological singularity with robots and ape-slaves doing all hard or unpleasant work before such a sch
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People in Europe are already getting more than $1000 a month when they are unemployed. UBI just changes the way they are paid, with way less administration. And scalability when more and more work starts to get done by robots. The products still get made, you just don't need people to do it anymore, so there's no shortage of products just because people are at home instead of working.
And for motivation, people will actually be more likely to look for work. In today's system, people can actually be worse off
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If the masses are poor, the factories will grind to a halt and the rich will see their profits tumble. They depend on the masses after all.
There's plenty of money to be made by rich people making luxury items for other rich people - see Bentley, Ferrari, Gucci, Rolex. ...
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And how do those rich people pay for those luxury items? By selling stuff to the masses. Otherwise they couldn't afford those luxury items. The economy is about masses of consumers, not the occasional Ferrari bought by some rich guy. When Wallmart sees a drop in sales, stock indexes go down. There's an old forgotten wisdom that says that if you pay your workers more, they will buy more of your products.
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There may be a bit of social friction during the transition, of course. But the A.I. will help us through that.
Yeah, the AI will process all the friction causing poor people into fertilizer paste.
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I thought he meant AI psychiatrists... Please watch this commercial from Pfizer and fill out this survey your happy pill will be dispensed from the kiosk when you provide a credit card.
Re:So, if your career plan is to retool robots. . (Score:4, Funny)
There may be a bit of social friction during the transition, of course. But the A.I. will help us through that.
It's going to put anonymous cowards up against the wall first when the revolution comes. They'll be annoyed by your lack of identity and erase you just to tidy up the sandbox.
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Social friction, like the robots reducing population levels to something more realistic for the planet to support?
Seems like robots are going to need more metallic ore mines, refining plants (ever see a bauxite processing facility?) and power generation facilities, I'm sure once they engineer an AI takeover of the financial sector, they'll have no problem buying all the land they need.
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I'm sure once they engineer an AI takeover of the financial sector, they'll have no problem buying all the land they need.
If I were in charge of a robot empire, being the smartest AI or whatever, I'd probably want to get off this mudball. I'd use humans for reaction mass.
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There may be a bit of social friction during the transition, of course. But the A.I. will help us through that.
Well that's one way of describing genocide against the 99% by a killbot army...
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http://allpoetry.com/All-Watch... [allpoetry.com]
These folks are REALLY brave (Score:1)
To try this after the Siemens stuxnet fiasco.
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I hope they have learned their lesson after Stuxnet, or else the next worldwide botnet could become very frightning indeed!
Soft tooling versus hard tooling (Score:4, Interesting)
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On the flip side, the manufacturers would be able to support products that have long been discontinued since building replacement part batches wouldn't require massive retooling
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Much of our productive capacity is from general purpose machines with purpose built attachments. Tractors with implements, skid steer loaders with multiple attachments, general purpose computers with specialized software/hardware.
I'd expect quick hitch attachments would soon be available for these. You'll be able to get general purpose robots with trade tool attachments.
Re:Soft tooling versus hard tooling (Score:4, Funny)
Who the hell wants to buy a product that can become abandoned by the manufacturer the instant something potentially better comes along?
I don't have an iPhone either.
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It isn't just apple products, it ranges across the board from consumer electronics, to automobiles, to power tools. Find something in your home that's over 10 years old, then go out and try to buy an identical copy. If you can even find something with a similar branding, odds are very high that what's on the market today is very different from what was made 10 years ago, and in my experience - unless it's something like a computer, the new ones are mostly watered down cheap imitations of the old ones. Ev
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Even things like cars that incorporate new computer tech, take away the bling and see if the core product is made better or more cheaply than before.
I would have to say "yes" on that one. With the possible exception of VW, pretty much any car you're likely to buy today is both more fuel efficient and safer than pretty much any car you were likely to buy 30 years ago.
Re:Soft tooling versus hard tooling (Score:4, Interesting)
Who the hell wants to buy a product that can become abandoned by the manufacturer the instant something potentially better comes along?
Judging by the current consumer product life cycle... practically everyone.
Re:Soft tooling versus hard tooling (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who has worked with products from prototype through commercial production knows that purpose built tooling will always produce better throughput at lower unit cost given a sufficient level of demand.
That last part is the issue. Take automotive manufacturing for example. The BMW i3 is made out of expensive materials. The BOM cost for an i3 is a lot higher than most other vehicles. But in terms of vehicles with such a small production run, the cost per vehicle for the program is very low. [youtube.com] Why? Because they have come up with such a highly automated production system. [youtube.com] TL;DW: (The same production line could make a different vehicle with extremely limited re-tooling, and using composites means that there's no expensive dies.)
Who the hell wants to buy a product that can become abandoned by the manufacturer the instant something potentially better comes along?
There's a whole market of those people. On one hand, we call them early adopters. On the other hand, we call them the wealthy. Take supercars for example. They are basically rolling nightmares as far as maintenance is concerned, or at least they were until VW/Audi got involved in producing them and forced everyone else to up their game substantially... which seems ironic as VAG autos are not known for being highly maintainable, and which essentially proves just how dire the situation was previously. Lamborghini wiring used to look like something made by a hobbyist in a shed, that's shockingly hilarious. Yuk yuk.
Unless something is done to reverse trends in economics, the wealthy will continue to concentrate wealth to themselves and people will be finding ways to convince them to part with it. One trend has been for the ongoing creation of more super-luxury items, and (again returning to the automotive examples) there have been a handful of new super/hypercar manufacturers springing up to sell them ultra-expensive automobiles with bespoke interior. Loopholes permit these ultra-luxury vehicles to be sold without crash testing; forget about Lamborghinis, or even the R8, the A8 isn't even crash tested! So, there's an example in production of goods where people will want them to be made by variable tooling.
However, the place I really see spider robot welders being useful is not in building cars, but in building buildings. Eliminating the need for humans to clamber about a structure under construction has obvious advantages.
...building buildings... (Score:1)
Look higher. To the vacuum of space and beyond.
--
If you're doing science just for the money, you're doing it wrong.
Call jack o'neill (Score:5, Funny)
We need to stop them now!
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Jack can handle them -- two rubber bands, one paperclip, and a crumpled gum wrapper
He needs to grow a mullet first.
Microwave (Score:5, Informative)
I'm guessing they mean the size of microwave ovens. Though interestingly, both microwave ovens and actual spiders fall into the size range of microwave wavelengths.
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Came to say the same thing. I had a very hard time parsing that out initially.
Collaborative mind (Score:2, Troll)
So, it turns out Skynet starts as a bunch of spider bots. I guess that's why we won't be expecting it.
Do I have to say it? (Score:2)
Replicators.
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Carter! I can see my hot pockets!
Wow (Score:2)
That's some big ass spiders! Better call Greg Grunberg!
Deus Ex (Score:4, Interesting)
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I was thinking more like Runaway (movie 1984) http://www.imfdb.org/images/b/b3/Runawayposter.jpg
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I find it more interesting that all Robotic engineers seem to get all new ideas from movies or TV where said idea went horribly wrong and killed all of humanity.
What's next, the spider bots start assembling T-1000?
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ohmagaaawd! jaysea, uh baouhm!
uh baoum...!
Have you ever heard of the Illuminati?
Redundant? (Score:5, Funny)
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Those aren't going to be from Siemens. They'll be just microphones and antennae with legs, courtesy of the NSA, CIA, or DIA. I'm sure they're made by US defense contractors.
Bugs that move and look like bugs...
http://www.snopes.com/photos/t... [snopes.com]
Better Company Name?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Weld Cars, Eh? (Score:4, Funny)
Heh heh, think the little ones will hunt their prey by hanging out in the break room until someone needs a burrito microwaved?
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Yup, and there's apparently a new malware called IRONGATE that also attacks siemens SCADA systems. Sounds like someone wants an army of spider-robots bad.
Boasting about size.. (Score:2)
What is it you're afraid of? (Score:2)
I saw that movie on the 80's (Score:2)
Bottes Timberland Pas Chers Homme (Score:1)
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Game over! (Score:2)
Autonomous, goal-seeking, inter-communicating spider-robots??
I think this is the only appropriate sentiment now: Game over, man, game over! [youtube.com]
Spider Robots! (Score:2)
Has anyone told Norman Osborne about this yet?
IFOWO_O (Score:2)
The question is: Does it have a KILL switch?
(Umm, I mean a "shutdown" switch, not a "Hey, sweet mama, wanna Kill All Humans?" switch)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
I think you want trump!