Nanorobotics
is an emerging field that deals with the controlled manipulation of objects with
nanometer-scale dimensions. Typically, an atom has a diameter of a few Ångstroms
(1 Å = 0.1 nm = 10-10 m), a molecule's size is a few nm, and clusters or
nanoparticles formed by hundreds or thousands of atoms have sizes of tens of nm.
Therefore, Nanorobotics is concerned with interactions with atomic- and molecular-sized
objects-and is sometimes called Molecular Robotics.
Molecular
Robotics falls within the purview of Nanotechnology, which is the study of phenomena
and structures with characteristic dimensions in the nanometer range. The birth
of Nanotechnology is usually associated with a talk by Nobel-prize winner Richard
Feynman entitled "There is plenty of room at the bottom", whose text
may be found in [Crandall & Lewis 1992]. Nanotechnology has the potential
for major scientific and practical breakthroughs. Future
applications ranging from very fast computers to self-replicating robots are described
in Drexler's seminal book [Drexler 1986]. In a less futuristic vein, the following
potential applications were suggested by well-known experimental scientists at
the Nano4 conference held in Palo Alto in November 1995:
"
Cell probes with dimensions ~ 1/1000 of the cell's size
" Space applications,
e.g. hardware to fly on satellites
" Computer memory
" Near
field optics, with characteristic dimensions ~ 20 nm
" X-ray fabrication,
systems that use X-ray photons
" Genome applications, reading and manipulating
DNA
" Nanodevices capable of running on very small batteries
"
Optical antennas
