Via EurekAlert, next weekend will see a soccer demonstration by nanoscale robots at the RoboCup competition in Atlanta. This is “nano” in the usual sense of “hundreds if not thousands of nanowhatevers,” of course, and they’re not exactly playing soccer:
The soccer nanobots (nanoscale robots) operate under an optical microscope, are controlled by remote electronics using visual feedback and are viewed on a monitor. While they are a few tens of micrometers to a few hundred micrometers long, the robots are considered “nanoscale” because their masses range from a few nanograms to a few hundred nanograms.
To win the competition, a nanobot must be fast, agile and capable of manipulating objects. These abilities will be tested in three events: a two-millimeter dash in which each nanobot seeks the best time for a goal-to-goal sprint across the playing field; a slalom drill where the path between goals is blocked by “defenders” (polymer posts) and a ball handling drill that requires robots to “dribble” as many “nanoballs” (microdisks with the diameter of a human hair) as possible into the goal within a 3-minute period.
Still: Tiny robot soccer. How cool is that?
The real question is how do they get the nanoscale robots to flop on the ground at the slightest bit of contact and writhe around like they’ve been shot?