The EU-funded NanoHand project has developed micro-scale manipulators that can fit inside an electron microscope and manipulate objects as small as carbon nanotubes - just tens of nanometers wide. The robots are mobile, "walking" on a glass plate. They have grippers that open and close. They can, with some difficulty, put down what they pick up - at that scale, things tend to stick together, but the researchers have worked out at least two techniques for unloading the gripped object.
The robots have already been used to build better atomic force microscope tips by attaching carbon nanotubes to the tips. The equipment is said to have a "high degree of automation."
This is a few steps away (no pun intended) from atomic-precision manufacturing, but it's one of a rapidly growing set of potential enabling technologies. It may not be long before these robots, or something similar, are being used to assemble engineered molecules into machines.
More precise robots would, of course, be able to do more precise work - for example, they might be better able to drop what they're holding. Something as simple as one robot adding an engineered molecular "pad" to the gripping surface of another robot might improve performance. Over time, more and more components of the robots might be built of molecules...
Access to the nanoscale is advancing extremely rapidly now. How long until we have nanoscale machines capable of building improved nanoscale machines?
(Hat tip to "nanoman.")
Nano technology has been around for years, but its really developing now. Like you say how long will it be before nano machines are building more nano machines. The only drawback to this technology is you cannot see the machines, so they can easily get lost. How long will it be before they escape from the lab and run a mock?
Posted by: Construction Recruitment | August 27, 2009 at 01:32 PM
Usually, robots are completely brainless, and require an external power supply. Your laser printer isn't going to climb off the table and raid the supply closet for more paper. The robots described here would be inert unless actively controlled by a human-controlled computer in a human-controlled environment.
Chris
Posted by: Chris Phoenix | August 27, 2009 at 06:12 PM