Take a quadrillion of these little guys and you would not take up the space of a grain of salt. You can have billions of them form a microscopic assembly line to build end products at a molecular scale. Or you can send them into the tiniest spaces, such as human capillaries, to make repairs. Each individual robot is capable of manipulating a molecule as small as 150 carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen atoms combined.

States David Leigh, from Manchester’s School of Chemistry, “Our robot is literally a molecular robot constructed of atoms just like you can build a very simple robot out of Lego bricks. The robot then responds to a series of simple commands …. programmed with chemical inputs.”

Microbots on this scale represent a significant disruptor for many reasons. One, they respond to chemistry, not electrical power. And two, because they are so tiny the material requirements for manufacturing using them becomes insignificant.

Leigh sees a revolution on the way with this technology. He states, “molecular robotics represents the ultimate in the miniaturization of machinery …. we anticipate that within 10 to 20 years molecular robots will begin to be used to build molecules and materials on assembly lines in molecular factories.”