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Get Ready For ... Nanosoccer!
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Sep 23, 2008 06:18 AM
from the can't-use-your-hands dept.
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."
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Should that be millisoccer ? (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.
Re:Should that be millisoccer ? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:Should that be millisoccer ? (Score:4, Informative)
It may be impressive, but it's not nano [wikipedia.org] : "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.
Parent
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The yokels at "DeviceGuru" just stuffed it up.
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the NIST public relations video actually calls it Nanosoccer too. it's meant to spur the development of nanorobotics and that's what the competition's been doing. i see nothing wrong with the name.
from Wikipedia:
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Next you'll be saying that the iPod Nano is too big!
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I think the article is wrong. The football field is described as "the size of a grain of rice". A 3cm x 3cm x whatever cm grain of rice would be considered pretty big for a grain of rice. However, there is a picture of the chip with 16 playing areas on it compared to a US quarter. I've no idea howe big a US quarter is - 3cm diameter still sounds like a pretty big coin - but maybe the 3cm refers to the dimensions of the chip with 16 playing fields on it.
BTW they justify the term nano- by saying that the m
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I've no idea howe big a US quarter is
Supposed to be one inch or exactly 2.54 cm (25.4 mm).
So, the playing field is just a little bigger than a US quarter.
TFA is effing messed up (Score:2)
From the article the playing field is 30 x 30 mm. From the image [nyud.net] with the article, the playing field is 1.5 x 2.5 mm. From the NIST [nist.gov] PR, " These abilities are tested in three events: a two-millimeter dash in which each nanobot seeks the best time for a goal-to-goal sprint across the playing field; a slalom drill where the path between goals is blocked by "defenders" (polymer posts) and a ball handling drill that requires robots to âoedribbleâ as many âoenanoballsâ (microdisks with the dia
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By the way, the US Quarter is 1.75 mm thick, which is a little larger than the width of the playing field.
Nano(arbitrary unit) (Score:5, Interesting)
That's funny. Your objection makes me realize how arbitrary the label "nano" is. Our base units [nist.gov] (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 [nist.gov]. 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.
Parent
Re:Nano(arbitrary unit) (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Nano(arbitrary unit) (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.
Parent
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Programming of the new Arena begins in 2009. My user Alan assures me he will do everything he can to save my register from being bitdozed by an old MCP Eminent Domain program.
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Dimensions typo (Score:2)
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There! they're!
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It's football you gits. The ball is primarily kicked with the foot, hence, f-o-o-t b-a-l-l. The abomination that you Yanks call football should be called rugby for wusses or fumble-ball.
Historically, "football" referred to the fact that the players were on foot--the contrast was with aristocrats' games such as polo, which required horses.
I, for one... (Score:1, Funny)
... welcome our new nanobot overlords.
Now, where did I put my coffee cup?
Re:I, for one... (Score:4, Informative)
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).
Parent
hatchooo! (Score:5, Funny)
sorry ;)
Hah! (Score:5, Funny)
Real Men play nanosoccer with buckyballs!
Oh.. (Score:5, Funny)
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 [wikipedia.org]. 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.. :-(
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read the article instead of the summary, it's really quite neat if not exactly nano scale.
But give them a couple of iterations on this and it very well could become nano scale. 3 orders of magnitude to go.
Not nanosoccer, microsoccer! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm really fed up with the nano hype, from the article "the players [cut] measure from a few tens of micrometers to a few hundred micrometers", so this should be named micro-soccer, not nano-soccer!
*yawn* (Score:2)
Re:*yawn* (Score:4, Funny)
Quantum Soccer will be boring. All matches end 1:1.
Parent
Re:*yawn* (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Bender: Checkmate!
Fry: No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!
Re:*yawn* (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.clipstr.com/videos/FuturamaAQuantumFinish/ [clipstr.com]
It doesn't even make sense for a chess game.
Parent
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Let me know when they're actually playing Quantum Soccer!
That will be more like picosoccer. On that scale, it's all quantum, all the time.
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Wrong player (Score:3, Funny)
On the nanoscale (not this one), it will not be Bend it like Beckham. It will be Kick it like Casimir.
Soccer weenies... (Score:2)
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We need nano rugby, get these bots in a scrum, punching each other in the quarks when the ref isn't looking, that's a real test of the hardest nanobot.
nanosoccer (Score:2)
Patriotism (Score:2)
Aw yeah, super-expensive, tiny, scientific soccer.
Let's see the Iraqi team beat us in that.
Almost perfect (Score:3, Funny)
Soccer is boring enough. Making it so small that you can't see it with the naked eye?
Brilliant!
Can we get Ronaldo and Beckham on the fast track to miniaturization, please?
And someone do some research on pico-curling, while you're at it!
That explains it.. (Score:3, Funny)
This explains the "nano football hooligans" who are constantly harrassing my cat.
I thought he had been hitting the catnip a bit hard lately until I noticed about 100 nano empty Foster's lager cans falling out of the brush after his nightly brushing and the distinct smell of eurotrash permeating his fur.
DAMN YOU NIST!
Geometry? (Score:2)
on a 30mm x 30mm playing field
Granted, I'm not a soccer fan myself, but I don't recall ever seeing it played on a square field before...
Re:Can we really afford this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Can we really afford this? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Parent
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He'll be warm for at least a few hours after he's dead, too.
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I'm going to feed this troller to death.
The 2009 US military budget is 651,2 Bil. and $79.6 Bil. of that goes to military research and testing. http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy09/pdf/budget/defense.pdf [gpoaccess.gov] [gpoaccess.gov]
On the other hand, only $6.9 billion went for the National Science Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budget#Total_spending [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org]
Now, to be fair, the NSF doesn't include medical research so we'd have to consider that but where do you think you'd ha
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Thank you.