Editorial for the special issue on micro-/nanorobotics

Abstract

Micro-/nanorobotics is an interdisciplinary field between micro-/nanotechnology and robotics. In principle, a robotic agent with a dimension in the range between 1 m to 1,000 m and 1 nm to 1 m can be considered as a microrobot and a nanorobot, respectively, and hence, the scaling law plays an important role for these miniaturized devices. Micro-/nanorobotics is the field to design and manufacture minute objects, to understand the properties and performance of robots at small scales, as well as to implement those tools/systems for various applications, including biology, biomedicine, and environments, with intelligence and autonomy. Therefore, the synergy of researchers with different backgrounds, such as physics, chemistry, robotics, materials science, micro-/nanotechnology, and computer science, is required for the advancement of this emerging field.