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IN WHAT MAY BE be the birth of cheap, easy-to-make robots, researchers have created complex machines that transform themselves from little more than a sheet of paper and plastic into walking automatons.
Borrowing from the ancient Japanese art of origami, children’s toys and even a touch of the Transformers, scientists and engineers at Harvard and MIT created self-assembling, paper robots. They are made out of hobby shop materials that cost about $100.
After the installation of tiny batteries and motors, a paper robot rises on four stumpy legs and starts scooting in a herky-jerky manner. It transforms from flat paper to a jitterbugging four-legged robot in just four minutes.
This small lightweight type of robot could explore outer space and other dangerous environments, and get into cramped places for search-and-rescue missions, researchers said. But that’s just the start of what may be a long-envisioned robotic revolution.
This eventually could be as technology-changing as the three-dimensional printer, said experts unconnected with the study and Harvard robotics researcher Sam Felton, who is lead author of the paper published Thursday in the journal Science.
Felton and study co-author Daniela Rus of MIT say they see a time when someone who wants a dog-walking robot would go to a store that has specialized equipment to make the device — “some sort of robo-Kinkos,” Felton said.
And eventually the technology could produce more complex machines.
“In principle it will be possible to say, ‘I want a robot to play chess with me,’ and generate a machine that has the computational abilities to play chess with you,” Rus said.
Today it costs a lot of money to build a robot, but this method is fast, cheap and specialized, Rus said.
“This is a simple, flexible and rapid design process and a step toward the dream of realizing the vision of 24-hour robot manufacturing,” Rus said.
These robots aren’t quite Transformers of movie and cartoon fame. Once they assemble themselves automatically with heat-activated hinges that allow the folding, there are no more changes, Rus and Felton said.
The robots themselves start out a bit smaller than a normal 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of paper. Off-the-shelf batteries and motors are embedded at a cost of about $80. Altogether, the early machines researchers made, along with the equipment to build them, cost less than $1,000 apiece, Felton said.
The robots, which the researchers did not name, are about 6 inches long, 6 inches wide, and about 2 inches tall. They weigh less than 3 ounces. They move about 2 inches per second. But they can be made bigger or smaller, with some limitations, Felton said.
He said the way heating activates the hinges was inspired by the children’s toy line Shrinky Dinks, which shrivel and fold when put in the oven.
Robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks, an MIT emeritus professor who wasn’t part of the research, said this could be close to other momentous changes in technology, such as the first 3-D printers or even 1947′s ENIAC early computer.
“Lots more people will join in working on these techniques, each making incremental progress and decades from now we’ll wonder why it took so long to get where we’ll then be with it,” Brooks said in an email.
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Biggest tax haven more like.
@Jay Lane: our government & Esb will then give priority to these data centers in future hurricanes etc above hospitals ,nursing homes etc .
@Windy Atlantic Way: & we pay the most expensive electricity in Europe and if not the world at this stage that’s to the Green nazis eco charges,levies,taxes and carbon levies while Apple and Co are tax exempt. What’s the energy regulator playing at? Taking advice from the existing and former banking “regulators”????. Wholesale prices were down 40% and are so so called competition only cut prices by a measly measly 3% on regulators watch.
@Jay Lane: your first sentence is horse sh!t.
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Electricity_price_statistics
@Jay Lane: Eamon Ryan thinks that he is the solution to the worlds problems & that Ireland will solve the world’s problems but what he doesn’t realize is that he is only a puppet for the climate change scammer developers . Perhaps spec savers could do their next add on Eamon.
@Windy Atlantic Way: most of these data centres will have to source their energy from primarily renewable methods, they also need to be able to go offline at a moments notice, they don’t receive priority over hospitals (who are all equipped with backup lines and massive generators in any such event).
@Windy Atlantic Way: “ESB will give priority to data centers over hospitals “?
That’s just made up nonsense.
@David Murphey: (don’t get me wrong, the Esb have hard working dedicated staff & that shows during storms ) in the event of a hurricane or its equals it will be policy that these data centers will get priority over many parts of Ireland & as large consumer they will be looked after first , it will be up to Esb to restore power & the government will ensure that happens first . These companies create few jobs which in return pay taxes but it is costing every individual household & business dearly through expensive subsidized energy production .
@Windy Atlantic Way: those data centres operate with a UPS system, stored energy and generator packs. A grid problem would not be such an urgent issue for them.
@Windy Atlantic Way:
You don’t half talk some shyte
@Ben Coughlan:
Apple uses 100% renewable energy in all of its data centers
@Greg Blake:
They have local diesel based generators to create electricity when needed. Just and FYI but The UPS systems are only used to give you time to power down the servers or switch to an alternative supply without interruption, they don’t use them for continued power supply
@Windy Atlantic Way: well ESB don’t give priority to data centers over hospitals now, so why would they in the future?
You’re just making up stuff that doesn’t exist.
@Windy Atlantic Way: Apart from a few construction and security jobs once it’s built,these centers are a total drain on the energy system. Nothing compared to what a manufacturing plant could give back,ie jobs, taxes,spin-offs etc. What it takes to power these places would supply a large city especially when we should be looking at keeping our carbon projections on track.
These giant data centres are unseemly and will devastate our countryside while employing miniscule amounts of people. Not worth it.
@Aldric Montague: yeah, let’s just leave it. Damn government, eh? They should be creating good jobs for everyone. It’s pretty straight forward, get good and nice companies into the country and employ lots of irish. Simple. Job done.
Tax Free.
@Aldric Montague: That sounds like the perfect model for Irish governance. Close off even more land for ordinary people to enjoy. Build vast data centres on it instead of leaving it for recreation. Use the revenue to pay off the banksters debt instead of investing it in public services. Perfect
@John M:
Zzzzzzzzzz
Yeah. Good luck with that when the company’s that want to create those jobs cant even get planning permission to build their facilities.
@Patabake Kennedy:
The point of this is to hopefully by-pass the usual planning process. How did you not understand that from the article.
@Fred Jetson: Hopefully?
@Patabake Kennedy: Well it would still have to pass the Oireachtas.
As part of planning permission make them build apartments above data centres that could help alleviate the housing crisis
@Philip Farrelly: would you live above a Data Centre ??
@Philip Farrelly: Not a bad idea – free heating from all those computers.
@Philip Farrelly:
That’s hilarious
@Philip Farrelly: Jesus, listen to yourself.
@Stephen Cumbers: yes
@Kevin Gallagher: I’ll listen to myself but don’t call me jesus
@Thomas McNicholas: actually you are correct. Don’t build the datacentres in the arse hole of no where and future housing (and make it social) can have energy and heated water as an output of the data centre. Not unique.
The real attraction here is that the domestic consumer subsidises the larger commercial user!
The larger user is on a considerably lower tariff than the domestic user!
@Jarlath Murphy: The larger user employs thousands of Irish citizens.
@Martin Flood: Martin so what?
That servile attitude reflects why we invite vulture funds to pillage the country!
The polluter pays principle if I pollute more I should pay more why shoukd the little polluter accept a higher tariff?
@Jarlath Murphy: did you pay your water charges?
@lavbeer: Have you been in a coma for the last few years?
@Martin Flood: Data centres do not employ thousands; a few dozen at most for a huge consumption of electricity.
@Kevin Farrell: DC’s are specialist buildings that literally take years to construct, employing thousands of local trades people.
The storage, compute and networking provides lots of jobs for other company’s the likes of HP, EMC, DELL, Arista, Cisco, Accenture, etc.
Specialist networking, cabling, power, services, security, programmers, analysts etc.
Then there’s hundreds of employed engineers that monitor, maintain and keep the systems running.
If product is sold from that DC then VAT and taxes are paid in accordance to the law in that country.
cant even get proper internet coverage what a joke
These schemes are major users of energy, primarily for cooling. In the Netherlands, greenhouses, municipal swimming pools, etc are deliberately co-located beside or near energy intensive heat generators, so as to maximise use of what otherwise would be waste heat.
In the 1950s, there were state-backed attempts to develop greenhouse based horticulture in Connemara, and other remote areas. Alas. following some teething problems (such as absence of heating), the indigenous initiative was gradually forgotten as the IDA instead concentrated on getting larger multinationals to develop industry in those areas. Perhaps it’s timely to reconsider such an idea – particularly as there is now a much bigger market for what once was regarded as alien foods! http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates%20authoring/debateswebpack.nsf/takes/dail1953070800019
Alternatively, ancient wind-catcher designs may be another way to reduce the large energy requirement in the first instance – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher
Wherever the site locations of such centres, careful consideration must be given to the associated energy cycles: alas, Irish citizens already have enough CO2 fines to pay.
Excellent, now how exactly is Ireland going to meet its energy reduction targets with all these new data centres. Oh yeah force every Joe soap to install a crappy solar panel on their house
@John: Residential solar + battery ain’t the worst idea, as a few hundred thousand can attest
@Thomas McGuire: I agree, but from a national perspective the energy saving from domestic PV is a drop in the ocean compared with the additional energy consumption of these facilities.
@John: Not to mention the additional cost of managing the waste products from the storage battery cells when they hit end of life 10 yrs!
@Jarlath Murphy: Well sure, every physical product has waste concerns. According to Tesla, in 2011, “In Umicore’s manufacturing plant, it is possible to recycle our batteries completely into recyclable materials”.
The numbers on data centres are very misleading the 850million apple data centre will probably comprise of 800+ million apple servers and 10 to 20 jobs for cleaners.
While the tax payer is left footing the bill to build esb infrastructure.
@Liam Burke: That’s exactly it. New Google datacentre at Grange Castle employs 15 and it’s huge. And the council (us) footed the bill to bring the infrastructure out there.
@Eamonn: Not sure where you are getting your numbers but 15 is not the correct number. Direct and indirect employment would be considerably higher than that.
Datacenter employment actually tends to be a function of how well the economy is doing. If the economy is doing well, demand for cloud computing goes up which results in changes at datacenter sites that are human intensive (e.g. upgrading equipment, etc). Steady state operations can be relatively low intensity but there is a lot of continual maintenance required year round. Finally, someone needs to feed the protestors at the front gate (I hear pizza is a popular option!). :)
@Liam Burke: Not the case , while the centre’s themselves have in fact low direct employee’s , there is a huge team like myself contracted in to keep the centre’s running. im certainly not a cleaner (nothing wrong with cleaning) , im a technical engineer. I was in one data centre today, along with at least another 100 people from all walks of life keeping the place going. The notion that these places simply run themselves is laughable !!
The former Hewlett Packard plant in leixlip would be ideal, large clean rooms and already built
Seems really wasteful using water cooling and then doing nothing with the resultant hot water.
@Paraic McDonagh: mostly air cooled now btw. Chillers and adiabatic cooling towers are old hat
@Billy Connelly: Even worse. At least you could pipe the hot water somewhere useful.
@Paraic McDonagh: temperature differential is actually rather small (10-15°C) depending on the design. There aren’t actually many uses for it.
I’m currently working in one at the min, my company employ about 140 people on that site alone, we have work there until roughly feb.
They also have planning permission to build another 4 or so centres, which if they all roll on one after another we could have potentially work with o/t for another 4/5 years!!
That’s a serious amount of revenue into the state, everyone gets a piece of the pie!, we should be building more and more of them.
@Stephen: And after they are all built, what then?
I have worked in many data centres, they require minimum personnel to manage.
They are not labour intensive once constructed!
Where’s the power going to come from ?
As per usual, no forward thinking
More like making it the most corrupt little country in the world.
Last time I checked we are an island that relies heavily on foreign investment,, YES I work for a US multinational and proud of the work we do.
To hear the tripe coming from some people here with their narrow minded comments is laughable.. The same people no doubt who will tell their kids.. “goto collage and get a degree”. The anti corporate leftist attitude will do nothing but drive investment away to competing developing nations and we will all be asking ourselves “where did it go wrong” in 20 years time if we object to next generation IT investment. Datacentres are the future wether you like it or not. Embrace it, dont fear it.
Few points to add:
1) Ireland is the closest piece of land between here and east coast of US capable of hosting datacentres.. Google “Network Latency” and educate yourselves
2) Datacentre power consumption will be carbon neutral.. They wont suck your precious power for charging your phones, tablets and laptops.. calm yourselves
3) So what if they wont employ 100s of jobs.. Some datacentres will be in remote areas, like Apple Athenry that will regenerate a town with ancillary employment
Wise up Ireland.. Either we take this bull by the horns or someone else will.
@Eric Daly:
Too many people that comment on here are completely clueless. They make up BS facts and have no concept of economics
@Eric Daly: Jesus somebodies talking sense, good man, five years ago the country was in dire straights with huge unemployment. Now we have a boom and people are moaning.
I wonder when people wake in the morning and lift there phone (connected to a network) and listen to the radio, (broadcast via a server) and turn on the TV (fibre through a server), start watching Netflix, (connected through a server). Does the common user actually realize how much the digital age is in there lives ???
When your ordering all of your Xmas prezzies via amazon/ebay etc. keep in mind that employed people like me need this, i need to put bread on the table like everybody here for my kids , if i was sitting on the sofa everyday drawing the dole, this would be seen as a parasite , c’mon lads wake up!!
We are guaranteed to get bombed in the future if war breaks out.
Cavan would love to get something like this….
Good look with that Ireland given how long your authorities took to approve the Apple facility!
@Jesus Christ: working on the Sabbath ?
@lavbeer: are you joking? I don’t even get Christmas off.
Sorry for being a bit of a Luddite, but can anyone explain to me what are these data centers exactly?
Are they just massive buildings where data (like stuff from the “Cloud” e.g. people’s photos, music downloads etc.) is physically stored on servers?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_center you could just Google it. Information is stored in a data centre somewhere ;)
@Billy Connelly: yeah, I tried that but it didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
That’s mainly about the old days of having those centers for supercomputers used by NASA.
I’m wondering about the data servers of major companies like Apple.
@Franklin Roosevelt: same principles apply, the servers fit in cabinets, about the size of a large fridge.
Imagine a large warehouse with 1000 s of free standing fridges in row after row?
They have suspended floor and Hepa filtered AHUs to manage the environment at approximately 19-21 degrees Celcius. N+1 power, UPS and generator to cover emergencies
Pretty dull, small team to manage the FM and a few offices for admin.
@Jarlath Murphy: sorry Jarlath. Most data centres now operate up to 40 deg c. Floors are raised access floors not suspended. Typically they dont put hepas in the Ahus in my experience. Most data centres have different n+ ratios depending on the plant item. The latest data centres (eg amazon) just uses Ahus with evaporative cooling wheels, no chillers, no RAF and the servers are stored in racks up to 5m tall.
@Jarlath Murphy: Thank you Jarlath!
@Billy Connelly: Christ 40 degrees C!
Who can work in there for any period without suffering heatstroke?
Are you certain?
Why would you raise the temperature to 40 that doesn’t seem to make any sense?
The servers can probably operate up to 40 but it will likely stress their obselesence and shorten their lifespan.
The floors are raised access, I think most people would understand suspended easier, they are used for the cabling access!
@Jarlath Murphy: max temp in a fully loaded data centre is 40 degc. Thats what you set the max temperature sensor alarm setpoint for a hot aisle. Cold aisle typically enters at max 26 degc. The layout of recent free cooling data centres have no raf. The use integrated server frames for cable management
@Jarlath Murphy: they is a dedicated centre being built in Coolock for all the dick pics
@Jarlath Murphy: and yes im certain having worked on a number od data centre projects
@Billy Connelly: Well you learn something new everyday, It’s about 8 yrs since I worked in them mainly blue chip multinationals and managed their FM including the cooling towers.
Those temps are crazy for the human interface! Are you talking temp within the cabinet or the room?
If thats a max is that a designed high alarm activation?
Is that a chilled beam type system for thermal transfer with low energy requirement as reduced moving parts?
@Jarlath Murphy: to be fair 40 deg is the max on a hot aisle. Typically you only record those sort of temperatures during an IST. The FM team usually change the setpoints after handover because a data centre probably has very few clients initially. 3 years ago i worked on a data centre with chillers and cooling towers with chw at 14 / 20. Max hot aisle alarm setpoint 35 deg c. The following year I worked on on with chw at 20 /26 max hot aisle 40 deg c. Recently one with no chillers at all, no raf and just forced mech ventilation. Ahus had evaporative cooling wheels for peak summer temps. Speed of technology is ridiculous in this sector. Ten years from now you’d probably fit a data centre in a 40 ft container.
@Billy Connelly: 40ft containers have been done. Do a search for Google’s efforts and I believe Sun/Oracle’s approaches in the area.
Turns out the design isn’t that useful except in a handful of cases (military operations use them a bit where they need rapid deployment).
Where will all the electricity come from??
What government doesn’t want to issue a joint press release with Apple and Tim Cook #RepublicOfPhotoOpportunity
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-apple-iowa-20170825-story,amp.html
That won’t happen when every Tom, Dick & Harry will object as has been seen in Galway.
@MyBrokenKnees: People are well within their rights to object to any development that would infringe on their lives. I know where I live if one of these was proposed I would probably weigh up the benefits, how many would be employed,where would they live and what tax would they pay…against the destruction of my environment and local wildlife,the effect of construction work in the area, and would the local infrastructure be upgraded. Will this data center benefit the area, somehow I think I would go with a no.I don’t know the ins and outs of the Galway situation but I’m sure these people have genuine concerns, industry/government must never ignore people’s long term concerns, in favor of short term benefits.
@zippo: only 1 objection to the athenry data centre and he does not/ever has lived in the area.
@Michael Mclaughlin: Michael. This is just not true. You are probably talking about Brian McDonagh from Wicklow and his objection was thrown out ages ago. There were another two local objections that were only overcome a week or so ago.
@zippo: The main objector is an American who specializes in this area of environmentalism with regard to the law -
https://news.vice.com/story/one-man-in-a-tiny-irish-town-could-derail-apples-plans-for-europe
The issue of carbon dioxide draws so much brainpower that few today could even imagine climate research without the greenhouse model for the Earth and its atmosphere. Young people are listening to the wrong message because it seems that concern for the planet is at the core of this bandwagon but climate research in its true form is quite different.
Why not make McDonalds restaurants part of our strategic infrastructure? Average of 50 jobs per franchise on a much lower land area whereas you get about 20 jobs with a data centre the size of a housing estate.
Think we’re gonna need bigger houses.
Can’t even have good internet
Ah brilliant. World War 3 breaks out, ” can’t bomb us lads, we have all the data !!”
The reality is this Data centre industry or boom is keeping me & thousands like me in a job in Ireland. Why would we frown upon employment growth on the island its amazing for the country. Better here than elsewhere , so many people are benefiting from this industry, long may it last. :)
Can I have broadband please……so I can use some of that data.
The impact on our power system and who pays for it has to be looked at. Our countrywide load is about 6GWs, if datacentres are to use 25% of it then we will need to add another 1.5Gws in generation. If that was all to come from, say, onshore wind that would be 4.5GWs extra installed capacity. However in keeping with 2020 (and likely 2030 targets) then 40% of that will need to come from renewable sources. Onshore wind is still the cheapest to deploy so at todays rates then 1.8GW of onshore wind would need to be deployed. Lest say turbines are 3MW in rated power and each needs at least 25 acres to benefit from unfettered wind then that is 15,000 acres of wind turbines. This actually sin’t so much and could easily be accommodated with robust, centrally directed planning guidelines coupled with dedicated grid infrastructure upgrades. It would mean a lot of intermittent power on the system but its doable and would probably advance the case for batteries to store power. The difficult comes in who pays for this extra 25% of power needed. At the moment the renewable industry is supported by the PSO Levy. It is a system that works and has enabled Ireland to rapidly deploy renewables (wind). It is paid for by each consumer in their bill. Given that data centres offer very little long term employment and benefits to the regions they are in is it reasonable to suggest that the present system of consumer led support for renewables includes paying to support the data centres load? Needs to be considered.
@Brother Sylvest: good analysis the notion of wind will never work as so much of irish soil is private, putting hundreds of wind turbines across the land would be too costly. Offshore would be the way to go really, if we need to keep up with energy demands we would have to go nuclear, either by tapping into the inter connector to wales or building our own,(this would never happen). I think ourselves , Portugal and Italy are the only fuel generating power consumers left in europe. China are still to this day building coal fired generating stations making a mockery of any green/clean generating systems. I’m working in DC’s nearly 15 years now i cant see them disappearing anytime soon ? Time will tell :)
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