Modern technologies are getting more and more advanced. In fact, even robots come in all shapes and sizes. The smallest example is a new invention from the University of Manchester – British scientists created the first ever molecular robot capable of performing tasks on a microscopic level.
The robot is called molecular for a reason – one of its main purposes is building molecules. The scale is astonishing – a quintillion (1 with 18 zeros) of these robots put together would only compose one granule of salt. The tiniest robot (less than one millionth of a millimetre) can be programmed for that using an even smaller manipulator. The robots function in special chemical solutions while carrying chemical reactions. The solutions can be programmed for various tasks. The robots react to simple commands which are entered by scientists.
The applications for these robots are mainly medical but they can also be used for industrial purposes, like building molecular factories. The technology has a few significant advantages, like decreasing demand on materials, making the search for medicines easier and giving an impulse to other similar projects. That’s why we may see more miniaturized robots in the future.
