Feynman’s Path to Nanotech (part 9)
Scaling KSRM Design Considerations There hasn't been a lot of work on self-replicating workcells. There's been plenty on robotic workcells that don't replicate, but almost all of this falls into [...]
Feynman’s Path to Nanotech (part 8)
Where to Start? In the last post we suggested that finding the appropriate starting point was one of the critical items to address in forming a Feynman Path roadmap, and [...]
Feynman's Path to Nanotech (part 7)
Plan of Attack The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer. (Seabees motto) There are at least two major parts to a project to implement the Feynman [...]
Feynman’s Path to Nanotech (part 6)
Open Questions Taking Feynman's Path to nanotech, or even studying it seriously, would require finding answers to a number of open questions. These questions, however, are quite important and knowing [...]
Feynman's Path to Nanotech (part 5)
Is it Worth Starting Now? Surely, you will say, it would have been wonderful if back in 1959 people had taken Feynman seriously and really tried the Feynman path: we'd [...]
Feynman’s Path to Nanotech (part 4)
MEMS Another reason the Feynman Path may not have been tried is the perception that a machine-based approach has been tried in the form of MEMS, and that standard machine [...]
Feynman’s Path to Nanotech (part 3)
Self-replicating Machines So why hasn't the Feynman Path been attempted, or at least studied and analyzed? One possible reason is that there still seems to be a "giggle factor" associated [...]
Feynman's Path to Nanotech (part 2)
Historical Note It's appropriate on this July 7 to make at least a reference to the history of ideas that lies behind the Feynman Path. That's because July 7 is [...]
Feynman's Path to Nanotech (part 1)
The Problem In 1997, Philip Collins, then a graduate student at Berkeley, won the Foresight Institute's Distinguished Student Award for his experimental verification that a defect location in a carbon [...]