Get Ready For ... Nanosoccer!

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."

Comments

Should that be millisoccer ?

[mbone]

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.

Re:Should that be millisoccer ?

[jacquesm]

it really is pretty impressive (FTFA):

Sixteen nanosoccer playing fields are built onto a single silicon chip (photo above-left) thatâ(TM)s roughly the size of a quarter. The the playing-field chip is mounted on a small circuit board assembly, along with interface connectors .

Each nanosoccer âoeballâ (photo at right) consists of a silicon dioxide disk approximately the size of a red blood cell, NIST says. Each disk has a T-shaped marking, to help the human players locate it on the playing field. The three small circles correspond to a set of tiny bumps on the bottom of the disk; these reduce friction, making it easier for the disks to slide across the playing field.

Re:Should that be millisoccer ?

[mbone]

It may be impressive, but it's not nano : "Generally nanotechnology deals with structures 100 nanometers or smaller, and involves developing materials or devices within that size."

From FTA : "The tiny nanobots ... measure from a few tens of micrometers to a few hundred micrometers, NIST says."

So, that's 3 orders of magnitude off. Microsoccer. But not nanosoccer. And the physics is rather different on those scales.

Re:Should that be millisoccer ?

[Slyswede]

Someone made a conversion error. The diagram shows a 1,5x2,5mm playing field, with goals 0.5x0.9mm. Maybe nanosoccer will force the US to finally adopt the metric system? :)

hatchooo!

[jacquesm]

sorry ;)

Re:I, for one...

[adpsimpson]

As a ps, there are 16 'fields' built into a chip which measures under 30mm x 30mm - each field is significantly smaller than the summary gives the impression of, at about 2.5mm across (although the article's not exactly clear either).

Hah!

[rts008]

Real Men play nanosoccer with buckyballs!

Re:Can we really afford this?

[Siener]

In a time when we are bailing out our greatest financial institutions with $700 billion just to get them to give out mortgages to millions of low-paid workers again, is this really the time to be investing in "science" and "technology"?

Short answer: Yes
Long answer:

The LHC, which is the most expensive science experiment ever cost about $10 billion. I.e. a drop in the bucket compared to things like the proposed bailout or the Iraq war.

On the long term science and tech have consequences that can benefit the whole human race. Apart from the main and direct benefits there are also often other unforeseen benefits that you get for free. E.g. The World Wide Web that you are using right now was developed as a side project CERN.

To butcher an old saying: The NYSE bailout is the equivalent of giving someone enough food to survive another day. Money invested in science and technology might teach you how to fish, farm, build, cure ... hell, just about every single thing that keeps you alive on a day to day basis.

Oh..

[4D6963]

At first when I read the title I thought it would involve stick figures a few hundreds of carbon atoms high playing soccer with a molecule of Buckminsterfullerene. Then I started picturing how cool it would be if we could make video games that used atoms of carbon instead of pixels, and an electronic microscope for us to see the result, and what the nanoscopic versions of Pong, Space Invaders or Pac-Man would play like.

Then I read the summary.. :-(

Re:*yawn*

[paniq]

Quantum Soccer will be boring. All matches end 1:1.

Re:*yawn*

[Kickersny.com]

Bender: Checkmate!
Fry: No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!

Re:Can we really afford this?

[splutty]

As the old saying goes:

Give a man a fire, and he will be warm for the rest of the night.
Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

Nano(arbitrary unit)

[AlpineR]

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.

Re:Nano(arbitrary unit)

[jacquesm]

From what I understand the engineering challenges of the 'true' nano domain are quite different from those encountered at the micrometer scale. None of these are 'trivial' or 'intuitive', it takes a great deal of ingenuity to overcome the hurdles on the way to true nano scale mechanics.

Forces that you can ignore or fairly simply overcome at other scales start to dominate. Friction? no lubrication possible. Energy source? Contamination and so on, all of these pose serious difficulties.

It's stuff like this that makes you truly appreciate the beauty of the machinery of life, such as a ribosome.

Re:Nano(arbitrary unit)

[SpiderClan]

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.

Re:*yawn*

[Oktober Sunset]

What? That was Dr Farnsworth when his horse lost in a quantum finish.

http://www.clipstr.com/videos/FuturamaAQuantumFinish/

It doesn't even make sense for a chess game.

Re:*yawn*

[WeeLad]

Not a problem. A soccer game in the US stands a very good chance of remaining unobserved.