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Get Ready For ... Nanosoccer!

Posted by timothy on from the can't-use-your-hands dept.

DeviceGuru writes "For the past few years, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology has been sponsoring nanosoccer — a new team sport for universities with programs in micro-electro-mechanical systems. The soccer nanobots, operated by human players via remote-controlled magnetic fields and electrical signals, slide tiny discs around on a 30mm x 30mm playing field. Two demonstration competitions have already been held, and a third one is slated to take place next summer in Austria at RoboCup 2009."

3 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Should that be millisoccer ? by mbone · · Score: 5, Interesting

    3 x 3 cm (or 1 x 1 inch) playing field ? Doesn't sound like nanosoccer to me. Not even microsoccer. Maybe millisoccer.

    Let me know when they have a 30 x 30 micron playing field. That will be nanosoccer.

  2. Nano(arbitrary unit) by AlpineR · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's funny. Your objection makes me realize how arbitrary the label "nano" is. Our base units (meter, second, kilogram) are all entirely manmade and chosen for historical reasons that could just as easily have led to different base units. It's an accident of history that we're now working at length scales one-billionth of the base chosen 130 years ago. And it's entirely coincidence if we happen to be also working at one-billionth of our time and mass units.

    Maybe we should just arbitrarily agree that "nano" means "based on meter, second, kilogram base units" and nothing magical happens in the nano range that doesn't happen in the micro and pico ranges.

    1. Re:Nano(arbitrary unit) by SpiderClan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Something magical* does happen in the nano range that doesn't happen in the micro and pico range, where nano range is 10 to 100 nanometers, as it is generally agreed to be. That is that, at least in terms of materials being made, there is a very high ratio of surface area or grain boundary to volume, depending on if we're dealing with nano-structured materials or nano-sized powders. This leads to different energy profiles through the material and a host of unique properties as compared to materials with larger grain sizes. In micro-sized materials, this doesn't happen, and lower than about 10 nanometers is too small to create grains.

      For the record; my spell-checker is underlining nano. Apparently Firefox is behind the times.

      *for scientifically valid values of magical.