Saipan might have cornered the market in boonie dogs, but there\u2019s a new breed of hound on the way. The Sega company has introduced a robotic dog called \u201cPoochi\u201d to the Japanese market. I don\u2019t know if the first of the species will be introduced to Saipan by a tourist or by a resident, but Poochi will arrive one way or the other.<\/p>\n
The line between \u201crobot\u201d and \u201cautomated toy\u201d is a bit murky here, but at a reported price of $59 (6,000 Japanese yen) I think we\u2019re looking at a toy, not something that is going to mow your lawn and do your calculus homework. <\/p>\n
Still, everywhere you turn these days, there\u2019s another robot story hitting the press. <\/p>\n
It gets the imagination going. When I was a kid I liked the old black-and-white sci-fi flicks, and the lower the budget, the better, since the low-budget movies had the weirdest creatures.<\/p>\n
So I was thinking along those lines, contemplating Poochi and what the future of robots might be, when I noticed that, yet again, I\u2019m under siege by a battalion of ants. <\/p>\n
The darned things are unstoppable!<\/p>\n
But instead of fighting nature, maybe I should heed it. So, move over robotic dogs, I\u2019ve got a bigger vision for the future: robotic ants.<\/p>\n
Based on four minutes of sloppy Web research, I note that ants are a highly evolved form of life. There are over 12,000 species of them. They can lift somewhere between 10 times to 50 times their own weight. They have specialization in jobs. They have a form of ant agriculture growing fungus (yum!). They have a sort of colony-based \u201cintelligence\u201d that, somehow, coordinates various specialized tasks to keep their colonies chugging along.<\/p>\n
Such are the results of something like 130 million years of evolution. Ants survived Earth\u2019s last mass extinction. Dinosaurs didn\u2019t. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s a pretty good r\u00e9sum\u00e9, you\u2019ll admit. I can see it now: \u201cSummary: World infestation since the Cretaceous era. Objective: Taking over Ed\u2019s kitchen. Years of experience: 130,000,000. References: Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus (all extinct).\u201d<\/p>\n
Although modern electronics perform all sorts of wizardry, and we think of robots in electronic terms, I wonder if science will ever be able to mimic some basic biology. How much of the humble ant could be synthesized, and scaled-up, with modern technology? <\/p>\n
If I hit the lotto I\u2019ll have the seed capital to start a robo-ant research and development laboratory in As Lito. I\u2019d have to hire competent people do to the actual work, of course, but I\u2019ll relish the notion of being some sort of visionary, big-picture guy. Allow me, then, to give you some of my big-picture guy concepts.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know how big our robo-ants will be, but human-sized is too obtrusive for constant household use. So I\u2019m thinking, oh, a body the size of a soda can. That would make for a good pet.<\/p>\n
The first order of business would be to design some sort of synthetic muscle fiber instead of using electric motors. <\/p>\n
This raises the issue of how the synthetic muscles will be powered. Could sugar and oxygen, the stuff that powers animal tissue (I think), also be used to power robots with synthetic muscles? Well, probably not, since I don\u2019t know what the heck I\u2019m talking about, but I won\u2019t let that stand in the way of a good pipe-dream, and in the pipe-dream, the robo-ants will drink sugar water at feeding time.<\/p>\n
As for the oxygen part of the equation, well, ants have a very decentralized way of harvesting it from the atmosphere. They don\u2019t have lungs. That\u2019s why they never smoke cigarettes. Ants are covered with pores called sporacles that oxygenate their tissue. So this is yet another item for the to-do list: After the synthetic muscles are invented, somebody will have to invent synthetic sporacles to go with them. <\/p>\n
Once these tasks are completed, the biotechnology, or whatever it\u2019s called, can be hitched to the electronic revolution. The robo-ant nervous systems will be electronic, and, of course, they\u2019ll be able to electronically communicate with other robo-ants so they can coordinate various tasks. <\/p>\n
Ants are ancient technology, so it\u2019s humbling to consider just how much of it can\u2019t be duplicated with today\u2019s capabilities. Maybe the next great leap in technology will be on the biological frontier, focusing on tissues instead of transistors. <\/p>\n
Or, maybe not. Maybe I just watched too many sci-fi flicks as a kid. Time will tell, I guess, but I\u2019m sure Poochi has an opinion, too: \u201cWoof, woof, beep.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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