Micro cameras no larger than grains of sand will soon blanket society… privacy is HISTORY

originally posted by: soficrow
a reply to: Bedlam

Methinks its about swarms and nanobots that are, indeed, powered by using forces inside the human body. Fits with other stuff I've been monitoring - and is the latest in medical biotech. Just with a different twist.

Hell, there aren't actually any functional "nanobots" yet.

a reply to: Bedlam

Oh yeah there are. Here's the breakthrough, followed by some very quick picks, ending with old news.

1/1/15. Nanobot micromotors deliver medical payload in living creature for the first time

10/9/16. These Microbots Will Treat Diseases From Inside Your Body

8/25/16. Mind-controlled nanobots could release drugs inside your brain

8/24/16. Nanorobotic agents designed to travel in the human body to treat cancer

OLD NEWS

8/6/2015. Why There Aren't Yet Nanobot Doctors

Scientists have long said that tiny robots would soon be able to conduct surgery and deliver drugs deep inside the body. Here’s why they’re still not a reality.

originally posted by: soficrow
a reply to: Bedlam

Oh yeah there are. Here's the breakthrough, followed by some very quick picks, ending with old news.

1/1/15. Nanobot micromotors deliver medical payload in living creature for the first time

This is describing small tubes with zinc in, that slowly traveled a fraction of an inch before hitting the stomach lining of a mouse. No active anything. It's a stomach acid powered toy. No processor, no sensors, no effectors, nothing.

10/9/16. These Microbots Will Treat Diseases From Inside Your Body

Which makes heavy use of the phrases "in the future", "will", "are being developed" and "may one day". Not one operational system. Not one NEAR operational system. The things it describes are either in the thought phase or are at the developmental level of the mouse rocket 'nanobot' above.


8/25/16. Mind-controlled nanobots could release drugs inside your brain

One of the more inane links you posted, this 'nanobot' is a tiny container that can be opened if you provide an external time-varying magnetic field. Whilst the article (and the developers, who sound like idiots) waxes lyrical about the demo, which was tricked out like a corner prostitute to make the thing seem more impressive than it was, what it comes down to is a way to release a med with an external degaussing coil that heats up a little plug in the container. Again, no processor, no sensors, no effectors.


8/24/16. Nanorobotic agents designed to travel in the human body to treat cancer

The most interesting of the links, yet still not a 'nanobot', this one's about a researcher who attaches drug payload liposomes to bacteria that like to follow magnetic fields. He speculates (although he hasn't done it) that he can lure the bacteria to a particular site with an MRI magnet. Again, it's not a nanobot.


A big issue is that "nano" anything is really interesting to journos, and they have not a clue what it means in reality. And that's how you get them calling nanomaterial science articles that involve things like nanoparticulate cathodes in batteries into "nanobot" articles. Or the ones you posted. It sells ads.

Again, there are really good issues as to why you can't have teeny tiny transmitters. If you try to build "a camera the size of a grain of dust/sand/salt/etc", and that's NOT what the OP article was on about, you can't also power it, or transmit from it.

a reply to: Bedlam

Bedlam. Could the "nanochips" chemically bobd into long filiments once inside the body and make an antenna that way.

The thing would have to become tapeworm sized in dimensions but for a super crummy scifi movie of the week would that be a good usage of bad science to forward the plot.

Privacy has been history for a long time.

a reply to: Bedlam

Okay. Bio-nanobots then? The idea being that “swarms” of micro-bots make up the whole, as in Chrichton’s Prey. [Great bibliography btw.] Or insect cyborgs, aka biobots? …Looks like one active area is using living organisms for mobility (bacteria, insects), so more like cyborgs.

I only have a peripheral awareness in this area. But again, a lot of announcements have crossed my path over the past decade and past searches were fruitful. Now, not so much. Has bio-nano-tech gone dark too? Or as you suggest, were the ‘announcements’ only marketing ploys designed to generate investment? Wish I had time to follow-up.

ED. to ADD: I DO know that info about military developments in nanobot, biobot and bio-nanobot tech would NOT be made public. The standard strategy is to develop the tech, then release bits and parts into 'helping' industries like medicine to 'normalize' it and gain public acceptance. Which seems to be where we're at with medical nanotech.

Breakthrough Tech: Scientists Use Swarms of Nanorobots to Precisely Target Cancer Cells

…The research was successfully carried out on mice by teams from Polytechnique Montréal, Université de Montréal and McGill University under the leadership of Professor Sylvain Martel, who is Canada's Research Chair in Medical Nanorobotics and Director of the Polytechnique Montréal Nanorobotics Laboratory.

How Cyborg Insects Could Save Lives and Stop Our Enemies

…"Right now, the concept and the technology is already mature," says Hong Liang, an engineer at Texas A&M University who's been researching cyborg cockroaches for the past decade. "We're working on the implementation."

There's no one-size-fits-all approach to employing insects as tools, however. Researchers have looked into using a number of insect species for various real-world applications, and have tried several different approaches to control the animals' behaviors to our own benefit.

NASA, 2005. The Next Big Thing Is Small: Nanotechnology Could Lead To Radical Improvements For Space Exploration

When it comes to taking the next "giant leap" in space exploration, NASA is thinking small -- really small. In laboratories around the country, NASA is supporting the burgeoning science of nanotechnology. The basic idea is to learn to deal with matter at the atomic scale -- to be able to control individual atoms and molecules well enough to design molecule-size machines, advanced electronics and "smart" materials.

…If visionaries are right, nanotechnology could lead to robots you can hold on your fingertip, self-healing spacesuits, space elevators and other fantastic devices. Some of these things may take 20+ years to fully develop; others are taking shape in the laboratory today.

BIO-NANO-MACHINES FOR SPACE APPLICATIONS

NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts, (NIAC) Phase II Grant, September 2004

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: Bedlam

Bedlam. Could the "nanochips" chemically bobd into long filiments once inside the body and make an antenna that way.

The thing would have to become tapeworm sized in dimensions but for a super crummy scifi movie of the week would that be a good usage of bad science to forward the plot.

You'd have to do SOMETHING of the sort, although you immediately whop into other issues, and there are a huge number of THOSE. But, if you have extruded long conductive filaments (and where are THOSE stored in your 'nanobot'?), you're not going to be very mobile.

originally posted by: soficrow
a reply to: Bedlam

Okay. Bio-nanobots then? The idea being that “swarms” of micro-bots make up the whole, as in Chrichton’s Prey. [Great bibliography btw.] Or insect cyborgs, aka biobots? …Looks like one active area is using living organisms for mobility (bacteria, insects), so more like cyborgs.

But again, all you're doing is attracting bacteria to an area. Not only is that sort of dicey (what is the person's immune system going to be doing, neh?) but it's not exactly 'nanobot-y'. One might, in such a case, get the same effect just by rubbing the drug onto the area with a skin penetrant, if it's a small enough molecule. Or going old school and just, you know, injecting it there with a needle and a syringe.

I only have a peripheral awareness in this area. But again, a lot of announcements have crossed my path over the past decade and past searches were fruitful. Now, not so much. Has bio-nano-tech gone dark too? Or as you suggest, were the ‘announcements’ only marketing ploys designed to generate investment? Wish I had time to follow-up.

I think it's like natural language processing. There was a big 'we'll be doing Star Trek style vocal computers and free form translators next year!!' in 1968, then they realized there was a lot more to it than they thought, then it was "next decade!", then silence. (this is sort of what spawned Kubrick to do 2001's HAL) There are a LOT of problems with doing nano anything. Exponentially more with doing something 'smart' or complex. And I think people thought this would be easily dealt with, and then it wasn't, and even the tiniest little sub-systems are hellishly difficult, and no-one is making a lot of progress. So we've sort of gone past the 'next decade!' point now, and only a few people are lingering in the field.

Among the many various issues with any nanoscale devices, the ones I mentioned in relation to THIS thread - power supply and communication. You just cannot do nano radio systems. And in a biological environment, that's exponentially more difficult. So having your 'swarm' communicate becomes the sort of thing you see handwaved and 'magic goes here' stepped past in the happy-time articles.