Molecular Robotics

分子机器人技术代表了机械化的终极目标。我们将设计和制造尽可能小的机器，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，加速和改善药物发现，降低电力需求，促进回收，降低生命周期成本并提高可再生性。这样做将有助于满足社会的需求，并有助于竞争力和可持续发展目标，公共卫生，就业，能源，运输和安全。也许欣赏分子机器人技术潜力的最佳方式是认识到分子机器人是每一个重要生物过程的核心。在数十亿年的进化中，大自然没有反复选择这种解决方案来实现复杂的任务性能。当我们学会如何构建能够控制和利用分子水平运动的人工结构，并将其效果直接与其他分子水平的子结构和外部世界连接时，它将潜在地影响功能分子和材料设计的各个方面。对物理学和生物学的理解肯定会随之提高。

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.