Nanorobotics



Part of the article series on
Molecular Nanotechnology

Molecular assembler
Mechanosynthesis
Nanorobotics
Grey goo
K. Eric Drexler
Engines of Creation
Productive nanosystems
See also: Nanotechnology

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Nanorobotics is the technology of creating machines or robots at or close to the scale of a nanometres (10-9 nanotechnology engineering discipline of designing and building nanorobots. Nanorobots (nanobots, nanoids or nanites) would be typically devices ranging in size from 0.1-10 micrometers 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.

Nanomachines are largely in the research-and-development phase, but some primitive scanning tunneling microscope tip. Basic nanomachines are also in use in other areas. Nanotechnology coatings are already being used to make clothing with stain-resistant fibers and are used on swim suits to repel water, reduce friction with the water, and allow swimmers to go faster. Nanotech powders are being used to create high-performance sun-screen lotions and nanoparticles are helping to deliver drugs to targeted tissues in the body.

Nanorobotics theory

Since nanorobots would be microscopic in size, it would probably 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 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 proponents of nanorobotics, in reaction to the grey goo scare scenarios that they earlier helped to propagate, hold the view that nanorobots capable of replication outside of a restricted factory environment do not form a necessary part of a purported productive nanotechnology, and that the process of self-replication, if it were ever to be developed, could be made inherently safe. They further assert that free-foraging replicators are in fact absent from their current plans for developing and using molecular manufacturing.

In such plans, future nanofactories in which nanoscale machines would be solidly integrated into a supposed desktop-scale machine that would build macroscopic products.

The most detailed discussions of nanorobotics, including specific design issues such as sensing, power communication, navigation, manipulation, locomotion, and onboard computation, have been presented in the medical context of Ralph Merkle in 2000, is a focused ongoing effort involving 23 researchers from 10 organizations and 4 countries that is developing a practical research agenda[2] specifically aimed at developing positionally-controlled diamond mechanosynthesis and a diamondoid nanofactory that would be capable of building diamondoid medical nanorobots.

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 or smaller.

Nubot

Main article: DNA machine

Nubot is an abbreviation for "Nucleic Acid Robots." Nubots are synthetic robotics devices at the nanoscale. 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 the University of Oxford.

Nanobots in fiction

Main article: Nanotechnology in fiction

Nanobots have been a recurring theme in many science-fiction novels and movies.

Potential Applications

  • Early diagnosis and targeted drug delivery for cancer[3].
  • Biomedical instrumentation[4].
  • Surgery[5][6].
  • Pharmacokinetics[7].
  • Diabetes[8][9][10].

References

  1. ^ Nanofactory
  2. ^ Positional Diamondoid Molecular Manufacturing
  3. ^ Nanotechnology in Cancer
  4. ^ Medical Design Technology
  5. ^ Neurosurgery
  6. ^ Tiny robot useful for surgery
  7. ^ Drug Targeting
  8. ^ Nanorobots in Treatment of Diabetes
  9. ^ Nanorobotics for Diabetes
  10. ^ Wellness Engineering, Nanorobots, Diabetes

Bibliography

  • K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation, ISBN 0-385-19973-2.
 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Nanorobotics". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.