Did you know that there are road engineering nerds and they do things like commission drone flights and mine interesting satellite data to understand major road failures like the one in NJ?
Thank god I'm obsessed with ants because this would easily take me. But, I know how ya'll are.
This will "awaken something" in someone on here I'm certain.
This is an excellent question.
There are some very small cameras and robots, but they aren't tiny enough to explore the world of ants, although laparoscopic cameras can be useful for tree hollows.
I often think about how much one could learn about ants with an ant-sized robot that could interact with them like another insect.
I mean.
All of the "exciting tech so-called revolutions" have been software as of late and I'm a little sick of software.
There are problems in miniaturization and robotics that get so little attention and funding. Probably because "robotics is hard" ... but the rewards for making a real advancement would be so much bigger than all of these things people keep calling "revolutionary"
Show me a more tiny motor.
Show me some real magic.
@futurebird @Klara I have friends in the #origami community and it will come as no surprise that a large number of them are also academic nerds in origami-adjacent fields. I had an opportunity to go to 6OSME and there were people presenting truly astounding research in material science, not to mention topology (because guess who designs how satellite solar panels pack/unfold).
I find that 1000x more interesting and useful than another machine learning advancement.
myrmepropagandist
Klara
Benjamin Reed