Wolfgang <wolfgang@vic.ozland.net.au> writes:
> I heard a radio item today that the Japanese have built robots the
>size of ants to work in some of their factories, in pipes and stuff.
>Could anyone out there tell me if there is any information on the web
>about this.
> Might not be too far from the nano bots, what you think?
Ant-sized robot: 5mm x 9mm x 6.5mm
In "Engines of Creation", Drexler speculates that "Cell repair machines will be comparable in size to bacteria and viruses." An E.coli is about 2um x 2um x 2um.
1mm (millimeter) = 1,000um (micrometers)
A "nanobot" -- depending on the details, of course -- would be as much smaller than an ant-sized robot as the ant-sized robot is smaller than I am. (For more perspective, I am roughly that much smaller than, say, a fair-sized mountain.)
Bearpaw
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~ bearpaw@aq.org ~~~~~~~~~~~~ "The future's already arrived; it's just not evenly distributed yet." - William Gibson