Molecular Robotics

分子机器人技术代表了机械小型化的终极目标。我们将尽可能地设计和制造最小的机器，并使用它们来执行任务。分子机器人系统的应用可以帮助减少对材料的需求，加速和改进药物发现，降低电力需求，促进回收，降低生命周期成本，并增加微型化。通过这样做，它将有助于满足社会需求，并为竞争力和可持续发展目标、公共卫生、就业、能源、交通和安全做出贡献。或许，认识到分子机器人的技术潜力的最好方法是认识到分子机器位于每一个重要生物过程的核心。经过数十亿年的进化，大自然并没有在没有充分理由的情况下反复选择这种解决方案来实现复杂的任务性能。当我们学习如何构建能够控制和利用分子水平运动的人工结构，并将其作用直接与其他分子水平的亚结构和外部世界相接口时，它将潜在地影响到功能分子和材料设计的方方面面。对物理学和生物学的更好理解肯定会随之而来。

Molecular robotics represents the ultimate in the miniaturisation of machinery. We shall design and make the smallest machines possible and use them to perform tasks. Applications of molecular robotics systems could help reduce demand for materials, accelerate and improve drug discovery, reduce power requirements, facilitate recycling, reduce life-cycle costs and increase miniaturisation. In doing so it will help address the needs of society and contribute to competitiveness and sustainable development objectives, public health, employment, energy, transport and security.Perhaps the best way to appreciate the technological potential of molecular robotics is to recognise that molecular machines lie at the heart of every significant biological process. Over billions of years of evolution Nature has not repeatedly chosen this solution for achieving complex task performance without good reason. When we learn how to build artificial structures that can control and exploit molecular level motion, and interface their effects directly with other molecular-level substructures and the outside world, it will potentially impact on every aspect of functional molecule and materials design. An improved understanding of physics and biology will surely follow.