Robotised nano manufacturing: current developments and future trends
Object-oriented nano manipulation was proposed for accurate positioning of the end-effector relative to the object to be manipulated in an SPM or SEM.It provided relative position information for manipulating nano objects (not for shape abstraction). A reference pattern was needed in this method.
At the moment, much nano-work takes place in a vacuum and at very low temperatures.
Do you envisage these problems being overcome, allowing for the manufacture of much larger objects with nano-surfaces?
It is possible for some applications considering the size and physical nature (mechanical, electrical, chemical or biological) of the objects to be handled. Also, the requirements from microscopes and applications should be considered.
In general, the thermal influence could be overcome by object-oriented nano manipulation. A vacuum environment is often required by applications.
The object oriented nano manipulation is a very interesting topic. The object –oriented though, implies abstraction but on the same time a rigitly/formaly defined entity, which makes a difficult combination with the fuzziness of pattern recognition. The question is how can one define in a formal object-oriented way the pattern and the constraints for the interaction of the effector with the object abstracted ? Does this provide information for manipulating the object other that a description of the shape ? And how is the shape abstracted and to what level in order to provide some generics and size issues?