How to create nanorobots.

[serban]

Hello, this is my first post here, I'm not very passionate about physics, I'm a programmer but I have a little dilemma related to physics.

 

I was talking with someone about nanotechnology and I said that we can create nanorobots in this way(theoretically):

 

We create a "robot creator machine" that can also create a smaller version of it self. The smaller version of the "robot creator machine" will create a smaller version of itself and so on. We keep it up to a point we have a nanometric "robot creator machine". Then the robots the nanometric "robot creator machine" creates will also be nano.

 

The person automatically refused the idea saying that this isn't possible not even in theory.

 

I think theoretically(I must stress this) it is possible. What do you say?

[CaptainPanic]

Once you reach the nano-scale, or even before that, you have to re-design your robot. Scale-up and scale-down are specific fields, and it's not just a matter of making things smaller or larger. You also have to scale the forces that your robot exerts, the electric circuits, power.

 

Many aspects of scale up and down are not linear. And that means that your "robot creator machine" needs to be able to not just copy-paste itself on a small scale. It needs to be able to actually design.