From here, which is a fairly good example of the way technology is evolving too big/fast/diverse to keep track of any more.
Mind you – at the beginning of this, the dude says “the goal is to reproduce the amazing capabilities of insects”…
… so let’s take a wasp for example, it can:
– self-fuel using energy from its environment
– see (smell touch balance taste? hear?)
– self-replicate using ingredients from its environment
– organise into swarms
– fight (teeth, poison)
– fly, with amazing stability, for long periods
– 3D print nests using ingredients from its environment
– run about the place being a pest
and about a hundred equally miraculous things*. I’d say we’ve got a way to go yet – in fact as I keep saying, it’s probably going to be easier just to reprogram the wasps than to try to make one ourselves.
I was going to put “evolve” into that list, but that’s so fundamental to any replicating / competing architecture, that it’s a bit redundant. Evolution isn’t a skill, it’s a side-effect.
Oh yea… “Search and Rescue“. Bless. We still don’t really know what these things are for
* but their cultural achievements are dismal
Robotic Sensory Loops and Whatnot
Flying Ships
Flying catch/throw bots
Quadracopters Jump Shark. Play James Bond Theme
3D Printable MicroCopter
Microcopter Swarm
Kickstarter Update: Microcopter
Flying Robo-Builders
Microcopter's-Eye-View of Protest
Escape Pods
On Addiction
And The Void Mooned Back...
The Spirit Of The World
A Machine to Steal Souls
More Anti Digital
Thync
Cartestian Robot Roundup.
Post-Scarcity Link-Dump
Servo Bender
“Evolution isn’t a skill, it’s a side-effect.”
Patently brilliant.
Evolution at this speed though is definitely something new, our technological progress is well-surpassing the capabilities of biological evolution.
Our RC vehicles have only been around ~100 years. Ants/Wasps: 60 million to 252.2 million years.
And once machines start iterating the designs themselves… well i hardly need to preach about the singularity geek-gasm here.
Where our tech will be in 60 million years, utterly incomprehensible, the question itself will be near meaningless. Beyond magic, we’re talking altered states of reality.
Well yea – if there’s a theme to this site, it’s something to do with the way that tech evolution is a different type of evolution, to the blind-watch-maker understanding of how biological natural selection works.
Which might not be 100% right of course – but it is mathematically reliable.
60 million years is a long way out. Our event-horizons for tech prediction seem to be around 5 and 10 (5 years = we can already do it, but no one’s selling it; 10=we don’t know how to do it, but it won’t be long before we do)
Nuke fusion has been 10 years out for decades. Same with various aspects of biotech… though a lot of that is now in the 5 year category. 600 million years? I think we probably are talking altered states of reality.