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Haptic Feedback Nanomanipulator

Posted by Hemos on from the excellent-new-look dept.

Tanner Lovelace alerted me to an interesting nano-manipulator in use at U-NC. They've got some interesting work going on right now, but what I found most interesting was their use of the real-time forcefeedback manipulator - the only I've heard about. Check out some of the experiments that have been done with said equipment.

4 of 34 comments (clear)

  1. Wanted: Nano-Parts by SEWilco · · Score: 2
    OK, so they can move molecules around. Now if only someone had the parts for a remotely controlled nanorobot, they could assemble the thing. Then they'd be able to use the nanorobot rather than their probe tip.

    I'm sure their server will just love the /. effect from people downloading the 10MB video...

  2. Remember "Adventure" for Atari 2600? by Dr.+Smooth · · Score: 2
    Slashdot readers will be interested to note that Warren Robinett, credited as having conceived the nanoManipulator, was one of the chief developers of Adventure. Remember the little "invisible dot" you could retrieve to be able to pass through a wall to read the credits for the game?


    How cool is that?

    --

    ...if you ask no questions, beware of lies...

  3. Interesting by LHOOQtius_ov_Borg · · Score: 2

    Very good work they're doing...

    One of the drawbacks, though, of any tech which adds a new dimension of perceptability to an existing system through artificial means is that humans run the risk of confusing the simulation with the actual object. This is a well-known phenomenon which is studied philosophically and which fluid physicists, telesurgeons, mathematicians, and others who deal often with modeled realities that are becoming increasingly realistic need to take into account in their studies.

    By translating the actual physical phenomenon to another scale and/or another dimension, it is required that one always keep in mind that what they are experiencing is an interpretation. For example, a virus doesn't really "push-back" at you with Xlbs of force, that is just a simulation of the effect of your teleoperated manipulator coming into contact with the surface membrane. Similar problems exist in visualization, audization, and other simulation and modeling disciplines.

    I hope that scientists will find ways to understand these interpretive obstacles and teach them to their students, so that good science will not be hindered by errors in translation...

    --
    o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
  4. Wonderful by turbohavoc · · Score: 3

    Its really nice to see that nanotechnology research is getting more casual, but there should be more feedback(very good song by covenant btw) from slashdotters on this kind of article. You should realize that this probably will have much more impact ont the world than if linux beat NT in some webserver test within the next couple of decades and this is definitively related to computing, this would make beowulf clusters with millions of nodes rock. But its so much more than that.

    This computer-age is nothing compared to the possibility of affecting atoms, ok i admit nanotech advocate, but if this technology leads to nanobots the way we think of them today, we could be in our favorite sci-fi movie really soon, with exceptions such as that we wont get repulsorlift and wont hear sound in space and wont have any mithoclorowhatever its called in our blood just to take starwars as an example.

    I encourage all you sci-fi lovers out there to get into the subject.

    Well, ive written far to much now =)

    STM leads to 'control of atoms', 'control of atoms' leads to nanobots, nanobots leads to 'very funky things'.