Robot flea circus

April 23, 2008 10:16 AM

Who first came up with the concept of lots of small (though not necessarily nanoscale) robots performing useful tasks collectively?

I know Feynman is credited with introducing the concept of nanotechnology, but he was not really emphasizing robotics, while terms like "swarm robotics" are relatively new. Surely these ideas have appeared somewhere before (probably in science fiction)?

posted by Krrrlson to Science & Nature (10 answers total)

The first place I remember seeing the concept in fiction is in John Barnes' Mother of Storms, wherein an army of small, self-replicating robots are used to perform such amusing tasks as lunar mining, the construction and maintenance of a spaceship designed to quickly reach the outer solar system and the replication of (and replacement for) one of the protagonist's brains. The book came out in 1995.
posted by Chrischris at 10:27 AM on April 23, 2008

Best answer: Not sure if it's the first, but: 'In the 1956 short story "The Next Tenants" Arthur C. Clarke describes tiny machines that operate on a microscale (thousandth of a meter), not on a nanoscale (billionth of a meter).' via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology_in_fiction
posted by duckstab at 10:29 AM on April 23, 2008

Also Clarke: Rendezvous With Rama. Not on the tiny scale, but certainly operating collectively.
posted by zoinks at 10:42 AM on April 23, 2008

John Von Neumann proposed something like this back in the forties. This was expanded later on to something called Von Neumann probes. Links are pretty informative but the premise is that you send out groups of little robot probes into space and they replicate themselves along the way using whatever material they can find and just keep going.. and going... and going.. etc. Neat idea.
posted by elendil71 at 10:53 AM on April 23, 2008

Not exactly what you're asking, but you certainly want to take a look at the work of Rodney Brooks.
posted by el_lupino at 10:58 AM on April 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

I doubt there's any specific origin for this. This is one of the concepts that we gained by studying nature. After all, what are cells in multicellular organisms? What are ants and worker bees? It's exactly the same kind of thing. (Except that those really exist.)
posted by Class Goat at 12:21 PM on April 23, 2008

PKD has a 1954 story called Autofac. The robots aren't very tiny though... some of them are trucks, and they're created by the "automated factory" of the title.

That page links to a Wikipedia entry on self-replicating machines in fiction.
posted by smackfu at 12:59 PM on April 23, 2008

I thought it was Von Neumann.
posted by turgid dahlia at 3:28 PM on April 23, 2008

Response by poster: Quick note: self-replication is not a necessary criterion.
posted by Krrrlson at 3:51 PM on April 23, 2008

Yep, Von Neumann. I can't recall the SF writer (writers?) who have used the term "Von Neumann machines" to name various nanotechnologies in their stories. Perhaps Greg Bear in Slant?
posted by zardoz at 9:17 PM on April 23, 2008