[ExI] not yet nanobots, but micro-bots

[spike at rainier66.com]

….> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] not yet nanobots, but micro-bots

 

On Wed, 17 Dec 2025 at 01:14, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

Cool!

 Penn and Michigan Create World’s Smallest Programmable, Autonomous Robots | Penn Engineering <https://www.seas.upenn.edu/stories/penn-and-umich-create-worlds-smallest-programmable-autonomous-robots/> 

 spike

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>…This is a remarkable achievement.

Looks pretty near nanobotty to me!  :)

BillK

 

 

BillK, I agree it is a remarkable achievement.  Regarding nanobotty, the very critical distinction is in how they are made.  Drexler’s vision on nanobots changed the way I see everything.  I came upon his Engines of Creation in the 1980s on the shelf in a bookstore (back when those still existed.)  I thought it was misplaced and started carrying it back to where I thought it belonged, reading it along the way.  I stopped walking, continued reading, realized it was in the right place, turned around while continuing to read but veered off pi/2 toward the cash register, bought the book, took it home, changed my life.

 

I realized Drexler’s vision is really an extension of Feynman’s sketchy idea from a famous lecture Plenty of Room At The Bottom, where he describes building up devices from the atomic level rather than carving away from a block of pure material.  To do that requires that we somehow place ions where we want them and create covalent bonds.  We don’t know how to do that yet, but nature does: you have bones, and those have covalent bonds, organized to some degree (not to the precision needed for nanobots perhaps (but organized (literally (a bone is an organ.))))  

 

We don’t yet have the technology to do nanobots as Drexler defined them, but these microbots might be able to do cool things for us anyway.  We don’t know how much software they will eventually be able to carry onboard, or how much autonomy they will have, and they won’t be able to circulate thru the system if we try to make medical devices (they can’t fit thru capillaries (not even close.))  We don’t even know for sure how much of the article is mildly exaggerated.

 

spike  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

<https://interestingengineering.com/ai-robotics/worlds-smallest-autonomous-microrobots>

Quotes:

World’s smallest programmable robots think, swim, and sense temperature using light. 

These microscopic robots can swim, sense heat, work in groups, and run autonomously for months on light power. 

By Neetika Walter <https://interestingengineering.com/author/neetika-walter>     Dec 15, 2025 <https://interestingengineering.com/ai-robotics> 

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