Rocky Rawstern has been investigating carbon nanotubes and interviewing researchers…The visionary closed our conversation with “We can’t talk publicly about what we are doing yet but, yes, 2007 will be an interesting year.” When their news hits the streets, expect big, bold headlines. This makes sense since there has been a lot of news about …
Researchers in Switzerland have developed a new technique for joining nanotubes. One technique, called “nanorobotic” spot welding, uses molten copper to join up objects in the same way that a human electrician might use solder. They position 50-nanometre-wide carbon nanotube filled with copper inside a nanorobotic manipulator, and run a small voltage through it to …
This is a major development for enabling mechanical control at the molecular level. Robert Freitas (who wrote nanomedicine) told Kurzweilai.net that he felt this was an evolutionary step towards the creation of a factory-style ‘mechanical ribosome’ system that could assemble biological parts via positional assembly. New York University chemistry professor Nadrian C. Seeman and his …
Jürgen Altmann has written a book “Military Nanotechnology: Potential Applications and Preventive Arms Control” which has an abstract at this link. From the abstract:Military R&D of NT is beginning to expand, with the USA far in the lead. Arguments for such R&D stress the increased military capabilities expected from NT; risks from military applications – …
From Eric Drexler’s website (e-drexler.com), is Eric’s comment on the first report from the National Academies Molecular Manufacturing. (pdf through link) I had previously commented in Sept, 2006 about the release of the NNI report Eric Drexler’s Comment on the report In its conclusion, the committee notes that it is difficult to analyze complex systems …
The New Scientist, examines the efforts to reduce ship drag using tiny bubbles, slippery polymers and trapped sheets of air. As a ship moves through water it encounters three types of drag: wave drag, pressure drag and frictional drag. Wave resistance is mainly a problem at high speed, and can be minimised with a carefully …
Swarmanoids are a follow up to swarmbots Will initially have eye-bots, hand-bots and foot-bots Swarm robotics is inspired by the social insect metaphor, and emphasises aspects such as decentralisation of control, limited communication abilities among robots, use of local information, emergence of global behaviour, and robustness. Most current studies in swarm robotic systems have focused …