Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A microscopic robot built from nanoscale components, typically 0.1 to 10 micrometers in length.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun robotics A very small autonomous robot, typically the size of a biological cell, designed to work alone or in very large numbers to achieve some task. Not yet in practical use.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[nano– + (ro)bot.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

nano- +‎ bot

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Examples

Comments

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  • with thanks to sionnach for the suggestion.

    October 28, 2007

  • "Humans and machines would eventually merge, by means of devices embedded in people's bodies to keep them healthy and improve their intelligence, predicted Mr Kurzweil.

    'We'll have intelligent nanobots go into our brains through the capillaries and interact directly with our biological neurons,' he told BBC News.

    The nanobots, he said, would 'make us smarter, remember things better and automatically go into full emergent virtual reality environments through the nervous system'.

    - 'Machines to match man by 2029', Helen Briggs on BBC website, 19 Feb 2008.

    April 1, 2008

  • The idea of nanobots both fascinates me and gives me a case of the howling fantods.

    April 1, 2008

  • Prince Charles shares your horror of nanobots, r_t. Specifically, he worries about their degeneration into [

    grey goo.

    April 1, 2008

  • 'full emergent virtual reality environments' sounds gooey enough already.

    April 1, 2008

  • Wow. I hadn't been letting myself think that far ahead. Now my fantods are howling even more loudly.

    April 1, 2008

  • A nano scale robot

    June 9, 2009