Perhaps the ultimate future of nanotechnology, this image portrays a tiny
nanometer sized, fully functioning autonomous robot helping to destroy a faulty
red blood cell. Though it may seem a fantasy now, all of the steps we take
are steps closer to the goal.
The long term goal of this project is to develop novel and revolutionary
biomolecular machine components that can be assembled and form multi-degree of
freedom nanodevices that will be able to apply forces and manipulate objects in
the nanoworld, transfer information from the nano to the macro world and also be
able to travel in the nanoenvironment. These machines are expected to be highly
efficient, economical in mass production, work under little supervision and be
controllable. The vision is that such ultra-miniature robotic systems and nano-mechanical
devices will be the biomolecular electro-mechanical hardware of future
manufacturing, biomedical and planetary applications. Some proteins, due to
their structural characteristics and physicochemical properties constitute
potential candidates for this role.
