[lit-ideas] I blame it all on Harry Potter.....
- From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 03:18:04 -0500
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Miniature robots play nano-soccer
By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writer*Sat Jul 7, 5:02 PM ET*
Exploding from the other end of the field, a silver robot glinted under the
light of the cameras and burst toward the lone defender standing between it
and the goal.
That's when the "Whirling Dervish," as its creators call it, lived up to its
name, spinning furiously in a show of razzle-dazzle. But suddenly, the robot
stopped dead in its tracks, hopelessly mired as if it were stuck on
superglue.
A metal arm appeared to rescue the wayward robot, but it was no crane — it
was an acupuncture needle. And the field it plucked the robot from was
hardly the size of a grain of rice.
What do you expect when the robot is six times smaller than an amoeba and
weighs no more than a few hundred nanograms?
Robots of all sizes have descended on the campus of Georgia Tech for the
RoboCup, an international contest that pits robotic creations against one
another in a range of technical challenges.
But perhaps the most intriguing event was Saturday's Nano Cup, a competition
hailed by organizers as the world's first nanoscale soccer game.
Held by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, its organizers
hope to show the potential for building tiny devices that can be used in
manufacturing, biotechnology and other industries. They also hope to develop
manufacturing standards for the untapped field.
"If you take an ant and leave it on its own, it can't do much. But many ants
can do incredible things," said Michael Gaitan, the leader of the agency's
microrobots project. "We think the same way with microrobots. We'll have to
see where it takes us. For now, it's soccer."
Five teams from the U.S., Canada and Switzerland answered the call, building
microscopic robots that competed Saturday in two events: A two-millimeter
dash and a challenging slalom, where the robot must reach a goal that is
blocked by stationary defenders that look like running men but are about the
diameter of two hairs.
The events take place in a glass-enclosed cube in the corner of a cramped
classroom. Two high-powered microscopes project the action to the big
screen, and scientists and students fall silent whenever a competition takes
place.
The odds-on favorite for the day was ETH Zurich, an impressive Swiss team
that developed a sophisticated propulsion system for the robot that's driven
by small magnets.
The creation was completely automated, allowing the players to point and
click a place on screen and then watch the device move accordingly.
The team has great hopes for the invention, which they developed over the
past six months, and has already applied for patents. The team one day hopes
to be able to send their robots into a human's bloodstream to treat cancer,
cell defects or for other medical uses.
"You can leave the soccer field, build these robots and send them into the
blood flow," said Dominic Frutiger, a Ph.D. student at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology.
But scientific competitions are as much about failed experiments as they are
about those that actually succeed.
The creators of the Whirling Dervish, a team of two from Canada's Simon
Fraser University, took that lesson home. They took a gamble by building
their device with a plastic base rather than a metal one, and the result
made the two-millimeter dash look more like a chess match than a sprint.
With a video game controller in hand, team member Dan Sameoto desperately
mashed buttons trying to find the right frequency combination to get his
microscopic robot moving.
Each twitch on the big screen elicited a gasp from the crowd and
encouragement from his teammate, See-Ho Tsang. "C'mon," Tsang cried to the
robot. "You can't be tired now!"
Each trial, though, ended with the acupuncture needle floating on screen to
rescue the wayward device.
After the event, the two partners huddled around the computer to discuss
what went wrong. Next year, they decided, they're going with a heavier
device they say won't get stuck as easily.
"The lesson was learned," Tsang said.
Sameoto shrugged as he put Whirling Dervish aside.
"We go through a lot of them," he said. "They're designed to be disposable
so we don't get too attached."
___
On the Net:
http://www.robocup.org/
Copyright (c) 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information
contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten
or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated
Press.
http://www.robocup.org/
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