Omega Tech Expo News! Breaking Technology!

Cross-Linked from Tech4TheMasses

Good morning/afternoon/evening, wherever you may be, and welcome to T4TM’s live coverage of the annual Omega Tech Expo! We’ve got some great stories and showcases coming your way from our wide-eyed crew of interns, who’ve spent the last six hours exploring every nook and cranny of this demo floor looking for the best and brightest upcoming gadgets, gizmos, and revolutionary innovations!

Now, as you may not be aware, this is the first major tech expo since the Reaper War, and we were all expecting to see some truly spectacular breakthroughs as a result of the galaxy being overrun by technologically superior elder gods. It’s also the first expo of this kind to be held on Omega in which any major Citadel corporations and research groups are participating, which gives it a scale and scope not many others can hope to match. We certainly haven’t been disappointed! By following the various links scattered throughout this feed, you can read more about any mentioned technology and in many cases see recorded demonstrations straight from the floor! Whether you’re looking for the latest repulsor tech, new and innovative hardsuit designs, the latest revolutions in FTL engine manufacturing, or just a frying pan that won’t burn your pancakes, T4TM’s coverage of the OTE is the place to be! For now, keep your eyes glued to that monitor, we have an interview coming up with one of the more remarkable independents at the show!

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[Ankhryptor] Hello hello everybody, this is Ankhryptor coming to you from the independent floor, where I’ve secured some very valuable time with TechOptryx, who’s here with some really amazing nanotech. Tell us a little more about it, Techie.

[TechOptryx] Uh, Ankhryptor? That’s seriously- oh, you’re using a screen name. Okay, uh, don’t do that for me – screen names aren’t really meant for publicity and %^&$, especially if you’re going to call me ‘Techie’. I mean, seriously, I do not like that at all. I’m Jil’Korah, Jil for short. As for the tech… Well, it’s uh, surprisingly simple. Basically I took some nanobots and developed a network interface that lets them share and collate information.

[Ankhryptor] So while I obviously know exactly what that means and understand the staggering implications, mind clearing it up a bit for our less-savvy viewers?

[Jil] Um. Okay… Sticking to strictly what I’m displaying here today, these are nanocameras. Each one is so small that it can only take in a tiny bit of information, which is why nanocameras typically suck. They’ve been tried a few times but the hardware is limited and the picture is usually grainy and horrible and so on and so on because it’s hard to include both a camera and a transmitter and the processing power to comprehend what’s going on. What my network interface does is it lets each nanobot work within its own limitations, then collects the data and forms it into a cohesive whole, so uh, you can actually get something useful out of it.

[Ankhryptor] Ohhhhhhh.

[Jil] Yeah. So you can unleash a cloud of nanocams and within seconds have a complete three-dimensional image of a space, and since there’s millions of them it’ll be fully detailed and the network design keeps that up-to-date. Then you can pair that with a basic VI – say for security work, if you need to monitor an area – a VI to record and keep track of who/what’s in a room at a given time. Lots of other applications, of course… I developed it for my own scavenger work, since you don’t always know what a wreck looks like on the inside and while I love my mapping drones, they’re basically limited to areas you can get into yourself anyways.

[Ankhryptor] That seems useful, but it doesn’t really touch on the staggering implications, does it? I mean, since word got out about this stuff you’ve had all sorts of visitors here at the show, and I practically had to beat them back with a stick just to get this interview.

[Jil] I was wondering how you got here, ‘Ankhryptor’. Anyways, yeah, lots of interest from lots of different people – strictly sticking to the nanocam functionality, which is baseline compared to what’s possible, there’s been a lot of interest from the medical field and, of course, security, which is why I used that as an example. Those’re both interested because it could integrate with their existing systems pretty much flawlessly thanks to the type of data it’s outputting, but the really interesting stuff comes in when you factor in that this interface seriously increases the processing power available to individual nanobots, a bit like cloud computing, which is kinda funny because they’d usually be distributed in something like a cloud, I guess?

[Ankhryptor] Hahahahahah, classic.

[Jil] (silence)

[Ankhryptor] So what are some of the other potential uses?

[Jil] Well, if you swap the camera functionality out for other tech, almost anything. Simple sensors take up less space, and the beauty of the network interface is that it’ll work on any kind of nanobot and you can program in the variables. One idea I’ve been toying with myself is self-repairing armor, since you could punch the envirosuit specs into the VI running the network and it’d use nanobots to maintain those wherever possible, which is actually a bit similar to some of the potential medical applications beyond just diagnosis – like, you could inject a bunch of nanobots and they’d clear out someone’s lungs of contaminants or whatever, all based on a VI telling them what it’s supposed to look like in there. It’d potentially work on almost anything, though obviously that’s a long way off.

[Ankhryptor] No way.

[Jil] …What network did you say you were with again, ‘Ankhryptor’? You’re one of their regular correspondents, yes?

[Ankhryptor] T4TM, Tech 4 The Masses. And I will be after this!

[Jil] Uh, sure. Anyways, since the obvious next question is about what kind of setbacks I expect, I’ll go ahead and pretend you asked that. Biggest issue is nanoreplication – nanotech is tightly controlled in Citadel space and parts of the Terminus, so there’s not a lot of facilities around that can produce a ton of them for multipurpose stuff. I uh, have a source, which I can’t reveal for legal reasons, but unless there’s some change in the laws, this stuff will stay on the fringe of acceptability until the benefits outweigh the risks.

[Ankhryptor] Risks? What kind of risks?

[Jil] Okay seriously, you’re an intern, stop interrupting. Nanotech is risky because they’re microscopic and hard to detect unless you’re looking for them specifically, and they’re easy to weaponize. Thing is, everybody who wants to weaponize them already can or has – the Hegemony did it, and so far as we know they didn’t use it to destroy any planets, and there are enough warlords and arms dealers sitting on old batarian stockpiles that these things are out there and available and given that, there’s no point denying ourselves the advantages they could bring, right?

[Ankhryptor] (silence)

[Jil] You should be asking a followup question.

[Ankhryptor] Oh, uh, right. Sooooooo… What about like, power sources?

[Jil] Good question. Seriously, no sarcasm at all, good question. There’s a few basic approaches, all of which require the laws on nanotech to be lightened. Nanobots die pretty quickly if they’re running on internal power because that power source is by definition tiny. You can prevent that by having them draw power from their environment somehow – make them out of an energy-absorbent material for example and they could last indefinitely just on ambient. That gets expensive though and by definition you need millions or billions – probably trillions – of these things to accomplish anything really cool so it’s pricy. Second option is to invest lots of time and money into finding a better internal power source. Tried eezo, it doesn’t work, for the record, so skip that one. Third option, best by far, is to constantly refresh the supply of nanobots, gets around the power issue entirely. I can’t get into how to do this since it’d probably count as aiding and abetting terrorism or forbidden technology or some such, but economy of scale would make that tech available if, again, they lightened the restrictions on nanotech.

[Ankhryptor] Wow. Well uh, I think that’s all my questions answered? So we’re going to head to another exhibit to see what’s on display. Thanks for your time, Techie!

[Jil] I told you not to call me that you-[Feed Ends]

***

Join us here on T4TM next time for an exclusive look at that frying pan, and don’t miss the rest of our exclusive coverage from the Omega Tech Expo!

Hey, one of CDN's own! Intriguing product - I've been hearing rumblings about 'cloud cam' hardware at the film studio, could be the entertainment industry's next big thing (you know how erotica is for frontline tech adoption). I'm sure if it takes off there'll be plenty of companies playing catch-up very envious of people like you who've got out ahead of the pack.

No idea what they're using/proposing for power sourcing, the discussion I was on the periphery of was mostly about the potential for display viewpoint becoming truly mobile, move and zoom on, well, whatever you want...)

Heh, I wish I could be in the Nos Astra Technology Fair office to see their faces when they read this (seriously, they fumbled the ball on that show big time - hopefully the lack of recognition will encourage them to put more effort in next local year).

This interviewer is so unprofessional. We are lucky that the quarian is so knowledgeable in his field, or this would have been a total waste. That said, I cannot wait to see where this technology goes in the future.

Oh, ancestors, you have no idea. This entire show, there were hundreds if not thousands of little Ankhryptors running around asking stupid questions and looking for good sound bytes - none of the big networks wanted to send any of their important staff to Omega, despite the OTE, so they flooded the whole place with interns. It made it virtually impossible to make any lasting impressions, though it was a hell of a networking opportunity I guess.

Illium's probably, actually, one of the only 'civilized' places where porn could get away with using nanotech. The controls in Citadel space are pretty ridiculous, and what I couldn't mention in such a public place was that that's because the Citadel governments like having it in their back pocket. Batarian SIU nanotech commandos were a public secret before the Reaper War, and if the Hegemony had it you can bet the salarians at the very least were researching it, though of course I have no idea whether anybody has anything functional.

Seriously though, if uhm, if you wanted to test out the nanocams... That could probably be arranged?

So, yeah, that interviewer was hopeless. Are we eventually witnessing the death of professional journalism? All they seem to be able to do these days seems to be following up some scandals of some socialites.

That cam tech sounds like a real improvement for 3D mapping. if I got that right it is similar to a fragmenetd insect eye with every facet having a unique angle and trajectory? I'd like to see what it can do, Jil, do you have any image samples you could share here?

I totally want to go to this and see all the new stuff in person.

But ugh. Those crowds.

then let's go together, i could actually use a new frying pan! ugh, i probably won't go alone.

No you're embarrassing and I don't want my own Ankhryptor :|

They don't have our bureaucracy. :) You probably know how it is - anything's legal here, so long as it's labelled, certified, declared, and the administration knows what it is, where it is and what it's doing 25 hours a day until it leaves again. Industrial nanotech scrutiny's pretty intense (ever since Entish, for obvious reasons) - we use quite a lot in building the atmo scrubbers in our clean-rooms - but if you can handle the legalese, I suppose the regulatory environment is still pretty permissive compared to C-Space.

I'm curious to - how about I have a word with someone at the studio, see where that goes? You might end up with an ongoing contract (no promises, but it's not impossible by any means), I know their current explorations of the technology aren't fully realised, and I'm sure they'd love to have a working system ready in time for the Big Secret Project going into production for this year's Bliss festival. ;)

then don't get one?
and no, actually you're embarassing. and pathetic for not coming along! puhuhuoo
seriously, get your [redacted] butt together and be a [redacted] pyjak. i'll be at your place at seven and if you don't open, i'll call the plumber to get in through the wall.

Man, that guy was NOT good at his job. If he gets hired, I may go on a suicide mission.

The tech itself is sounding good, though.

While on Omega, be sure to buy our new "Fruit Punch Malt" at the Shikkzy Brewery in Gozu District! Proceeds go to help cure Kepral's! Screw the compact!

So are we getting a report on that frying pan or not? Mildly inept chefs (i.e. me) want to know! It's looking kind of like Presslink is the only net that's rebroadcast T4TM this way...

That could definitely work! I'd imagine a shoot without actual cameras/drones/whatever clogging up the room would be a lot easier, too - once I get my fabrication system licensed it's literally anytime, anywhere, if you take my meaning.

That uh, wasn't a double entendre.

And lo and behold the alchemical process that turns a thread that starts out with the possible industrial, commercial, and military applications of revolutionary cloud based, swarm intelligence drive nanite colonies into how great it would be for porn and one quarian's quest to grope a porn star.

It's truly a tragedy it's not yet possible to hose down all involved with icy water over the extranet.

From what I heard, you're the one who got penetrated by that Thanatos asshole.

You know, making passing references to things you briefly heard about possibly occurring on the old servers isn't going to make people fall to their knees in awe at your genius and cosmopolitan with-it-tude. It just makes you look like some kind of geriatric ball of senility and delusion trying to convince the kids he's hip because he's got the latest RainbowWire and man would you check out these hotpants. And as then, much like now, all that really inspires is a vague feeling of guilt, pity, and perhaps some muttering undertones of "shouldn't someone do something"?

Meh, it amused me, at least.

Hey, now. It's a multipurpose nanoswarm. Besides, a porn shoot has all sorts of testing relevance, particularly when it comes to uh... medical applications? In theory, we should be able to see inside the stars, right down to veins, capillaries, all that fun stuff. Seems like there's a penetration joke in there but I'm not going to make it (right now). Granted most of that would end up cut from the final vid since it's totally unnecessary, but it's a perfectly valid testing ground.

Now I'm no expert on nano-scale machinery but you are, Mr. Techoptryx so I'll ask you!

How well do you reckon an autonomous nanomachine could accommodate tech for prospecting minerals and other valuables, in space conditions?

It might work for quickly scanning for surface deposits, but for any real profit you need deeper mines anyways which means ground-penetration. That is, unfortunately, something these particular nanobots aren't much good for. I'm sure something similar is possible, but it'd mean a ton of work and the nanobots themselves would have to be highly specialized.

That said, they should work very well for asteroids and other porous rock surfaces as long as you have the right sensor interpretation packages installed.