Yes, you read that right.
Scientists at Cambridge were working on artificial bones for medical uses. One of the less interesting tasks they needed to perform was dipping objects in a dish of calcium and protein, rinsing them off, and then dipping the same object in a dish of phosphate and protein. For science. But dipping, rinsing and dipping gets tedious after a while. Even for science. So what'd they do? Rather than take the easy way out and hire an underpaid
slave intern to do it, they made robots out of Mindstorms Lego sets to do it for them.
I know this sounds cool, but am I the only one concerned the prospect of by Lego robots? I mean, think about it: First they've made basic robots. What if they make the robots self-repairing? After all, what's easier to repair than Legos? And once they're self-repairing, the scientists will no doubt want to start improving the robot's intelligence. Egad, man! We'll have an army of self-repairing, brilliant, robots on our hands, bitter from being kept in boxes for decades, nay, centuries...
Just thinking out loud here.
Original news article
here.