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Nanorobotics is the technology of creating machines or robots at or close to the scale of a nanometre (10-9 metres). More specifically, nanorobotics refers to the still largely theoretical nanotechnology engineering discipline of designing and building nanorobots. Nanorobots (or nanobots) are typically devices ranging in size from 0.1-10 micrometres and constructed of nanoscale or molecular components. As no artificial non-biological nanorobots have so far been created, they remain a hypothetical concept at this time.
Another definition sometimes used is a robot which allows precision interactions with nanoscale objects, or can manipulate with nanoscale resolution. Following this definition even a large apparatus such as an Atomic force microscope can be considered a nanorobotic instrument when configured to perform nanomanipulation. Also, macroscale robots or microrobots which can move with nanoscale precision can also be considered nanorobots.
Present research
Nanomachines are largely in the research-and-development phase, but some primitive devices have been tested. An example is a sensor having a switch approximately 1.5 nanometers across, capable of counting specific molecules in a chemical sample. The first useful applications of nanomachines will likely be in medical technology, where they could be used to identify pathogens and toxins from samples of body fluid and destroy them. Another potential application is the detection of toxic chemicals, and the measurement of their concentrations, in the environment. Recently, Rice University has demonstrated a single-molecule car *, which is developed by a chemical process and includes buckyballs for wheels. It is actuated by controlling the environmental temperature and by positioning a scanning tunneling microscope tip.
Nanorobotics theory
Since nanorobots would be microscopic in size, it may be necessary for very large numbers of them to work together to perform macroscopic tasks. These nanorobot swarms, both those which are incapable of replication (as in utility fog) and those which are capable of unconstrained replication in the natural environment (as in grey goo and its less common variants) are found in many science fiction stories, such as the nanoprobes in Star Trek, nanogenes in the Doctor Who episode "The Empty Child", or nanobots in Red Dwarf. The word "nanobot" (also "nanite" or "nanogene") is often used to indicate this fictional context and is an informal or even pejorative term to refer to the engineering concept of nanorobots. The word nanorobot is the correct technical term in the nonfictional context of serious engineering studies *.
Some hold the view that nanorobots capable of replication outside of a restricted factory environment do not form a necessary part of a productive nanotechnology, that the process of self-replication can be made inherently safe, and free-foraging replicators are in fact absent from current plans for developing and using molecular manufacturing.
Medical nanotechnology is often expected to utilize nanorobots injected into the patient to perform their treatment on a cellular level. Such nanorobots intended for use in medicine also might not replicate *, as this would needlessly increase device complexity, reduce reliability, and interfere with the medical mission. Instead, medical nanorobots may be manufactured in carefully controlled nanofactories in which nanoscale machines are solidly integrated into a desktop-scale machine that builds macroscopic products.
The most detailed engineering discussions of nanorobotics, including specific design issues such as sensing, power, communication, navigation, manipulation, locomotion, and onboard computation, have been explored in the medical context of nanomedicine.
As a secondary meaning, "nanorobotics" is also sometimes used to refer to attempts to miniaturize robots or machines to any size, including the development of robots the size of insects.
Nubot
Nubot is an abbreviation for Nucleic Acid Robots. Nubots are synthetic robotics devices at the nano-scale. Representative nubots include the several DNA walkers reported by Ned Seeman's group at NYU, Niles Pierce's group at Caltech, John Reif's group at Duke University, Chengde Mao's group at Purdue, and Andrew Turberfield's group at Univ. of Oxford.
External links
- Carnegie Mellon NanoRobotics Lab
- Molecular Robotics Overview
- Nanorobotics in Medicine
- Medical Nanorobotics
- Nanorobotics Control Simulation
- Nanorobotics - Info Center ETHZ
- Rice University - NanoCar
"Nanorobotics"