The robot “Hexaglide” of the Federal Polytechnic in Zurich. The axes of the prismatic joints are horizontal and parallel.
The “Hexaglide” of the robot EPFH, Zürich. The universal joints close to the base of the fixed length legs moves Along a horizontal axis parallel
This one design was immediately interesting, because unlike most other ideas for nanoscale manipulators, this one feels like it could be fit in a small room. It does not require convoluted sets of gears and axles put one inside the other to provide 6DOF, merely a ring with cables strapped to moving bars. And the best part is that all the motions are generated by back-and-forth motion of rods set in parallel.
The only problem is that it only offers ‘local 6DOF’: It can turn and twist atoms on a deposition or abstraction reaction, or do some subtle things with a tip that nobody can do with only X+-/Y+-/Z+- motions, but it can’t really reach out towards a conveyor, draw an atom from a feedstock and then go a couple hundred nanometers to the other side of the workspace. It’s not a massive automation thing like that, it’s for finer, local motion. The example that comes to mind is Drexler’s carbon deposition reaction based on having a tip with a carbyne radical approach a surface from a certain angle, then bond, twist 90º and pull out. Such a convoluted thing frowned upon in favor of more conventional things, like having an atomic force microscope with fifty thousand tips each with a radical at one end and anyone should be happy with that.
As for the actual implementation, I image silicon rods with (n,0) nanotubes grown on their surface, with the other end of the nanotube (Single walled ones exclusively) connected to a disc of unstrained Silicon, surface (111). A tip would be grown on the underside of the Silicon, and the rods would be pushed by other mechanisms — abstracted away from this. Perhaps larger-scale motion could be accomplished by mounting the whole thing, rods and nanotubes and “abstracted fine-motion rod-pushers”, all into a big holder tied to a piezoelectric piece like a normal scanning probe.
How many of these could you fit in the area of a cantilever? Time to whip out NanoEngineer and draw for a while.
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