Originally published at: Researchers create a robot so small it can crawl along the edge of a penny | Boing Boing
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Do you want grey goo? Because this is how you get grey goo.
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All I can think of is the spider robot from Runaway. 
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The people in the video are not masked against Covid!
we can’t help but create things that will ultimately destroy us.
No no, that’s the robot that injects you with the tiny robots.
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We have one cent coins in the USA, not pennies
So?
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If one attaches two different sorts of metal together then due to differences in expansion coefficient together they’ll curl (a bimetallic strip). If one then cuts them into a shape so that they’ll inch across a surface if you change the ambient temperature then you may call that a robot? (“eh give it up, some words just kinda lose their meaning; can’t fight linguistics.” but but to decimate just means to destroy a tenth, just a tenth i tells ya! “[eyes-skyward emoji]”)
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I was composing just such an objection, but you beat me to it. This isn’t much different from blowing a dust bunny around with a straw. Since both the power and the guidance are external, calling the tiny bit that moves the “robot” seems like a bit of a stretch.
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Did they scrape these off the Terminator’s balls?
Seems even more targeted than that?
In this case, the researchers used a scanned laser beam to rapidly heat the robot at different targeted locations across its body.
It sounds like they’re actively pushing it around with a laser to me.
That’s what I immediately thought of. Although if they’re targeting specific parts of the “robot” to make individual bits move, I suppose it’s more of a marionette - only being moved with lasers rather than string.
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“We can shoot lasers at it and get it to move” feels kind of like “we can poke it with sticks and get it to move”.
Maybe a better term could be laser marionette.
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Dude, they’re ALREADY in the burgers!
Tell that to the officials at the US mint:
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is the name of my Daft Punk cover band.
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