Revision as of 21:52, 1 December 2013

previous: technology level II
next: further improvement at technology level III

The kind of products in this technology level are outlined in the definition of APM on the Main Page. This page should give more details to the different aspects of advanced APM systems.

Productive nanosystems

In the beginning of APM research only assemblers where considered for reachig the capability to produce macroscopic amounts of a product.
At T.Level III it turns out that Advanced nanofactories are more balanced and efficient than Assembler systems. At technology level I the border between minimal assemblers and rudimentary nanofactories is more blurred. A rudimentary nanofactory might be buildabel without self replicon but a simplified two dimentional assembler model might work well too.
To have an umbrella term for both ideas The therm productive nanosystems was introduced.

Using the whole volume for the building process of the product rather than a layer in the "classic" nanofactory design could speed up the building process. But this will not be neccesary for practical usage [TODO find existing proof]. If you build a solid block though you might end up to being slower than with the layer method due to the fractal growth speedup limit

Assemblers

Note: Assemblers are deprecated!
The idea is to create a machine with sidelengths of a few hundred nanometers which packages all the functionaliy to produce useful products and also make copies of itself.
This way you get an exponential rate of reproduction and can produce macroscopic goods in reasonable amounts of time.

It turned out that packaging all the functionality into such a small package is a rather unbalanced and inefficient approach for T.Level III.
[TODO add more detailed explanation with assembly levels]

Quite a bit of thought was put into this model.

Either they where sopposed to swim about in a solution or there was some form of movement mechanism in a machine phase scaffold crystal envisioned like:

• sliding cubes [TODO add references]
• legged blocks [TODO add references]
  

The combination of their appearance (legs) with their very tightly packed capability of self replication led to the situation that the public started to perceive this technology as swarms of tiny life like nano-bugs that could potentially start uncontrollable and unstoppable self replication. Why this is a rather missinformed opinion can be read up here.

The methods for movement are still relevant for higher assembly levels in nanofactories for transport of microcomponents. [and self repair by microcomponent replavcement ..]
The legged block mobility design is also known from the concept of Utility Fog (speculativity warning) but has other design priorities in an manufacturing context like more rigidity and less "intelligence".

Advanced nanofactories

An artistic depiction of a nanofactory. Note that only assemly level IV (convergent assembly) is visible in this picture.
The official productive nanosystem video [1] shows all the other assembly levels except IV.

Assembly levels

The assambly process of AP products can be clearly devided in a number of subsequent steps no matter wether the concrete implementetion of a productive nanosytem looks more like a nanofactory or more like an assembler system. They are implementation agnostic. Further details can de found on the assembly levels page.

[TODO add assembly levels from Blog - add nanofactory graphic,...]

Design Levels

Atomistic level design

This is the art of designing diamondoid molecular elements DMEs To do so there was developed a great software tool called [nanoengineer-1]

Bulk limit design

Bigger structures where atomic detail may matter less or is simply not simulatable yet because of limited computation power may be designd with conventional methods of solid modelling. A vew issues have to be thought about though:

• Since we operate on the lowermust size level there needs to be set a minimum wall thickness that must not be deceeded
• surfaces should be kept parallel to the main crystallographic faces such that they will not create random steps when auto-filled with virtual atoms.

[todo add links to demo collection]

System level design

This is needed for AP manufacturing systems and their products ...
[Todo: explain: elasticity emulation; infinitesimal gear bearings; recycling organisation; octocube ...]

Logistics

• Data
• Energy
• Raw Material
• Waste

Types of Diamondoid Molecular Elements (DMEs)

• Diamondoid Molecular machine elements DMMEs
• Diamondoid Molecular structural elements DMSEs

Bearings

Fasteners

Others

Minimal set of compatible DMMEs

In electric circuits there is one topological and three kinds of basic passive elements.
Adding an active switching element one can create a great class of circuits.

• fork node
• capacitors
• inductors
• resistors

Those passive elements have a direct correspondences in rotative or reciprocating mechanics namely in order:

• planetary or differential gearbox (and analogons for reciprocating mechanics)
• springs
• inertial masses
• friction elements

But there are limits to the electric-mechanic analogy. Active elements often differ significantly in their qualitative behavior

• transistors & locking pins are quite different in behaviour
• transformers & gearboxes are quite different in behaviour

With createing a set of standard sizes of those elements and a modular building block system to put them together creating rather complex systems can be done in a much short time.
Like in electronics one can first create a schematics and subsequently the board.

To do: Create a minimal set of minimal sized DMMEs for rotative nanomechanics. Modular housing structures standard bearings and standard axle redirectioning are also needed.

To investigate: how can reciprocating mechanics be implemented considereng the passivation bending issue

Tooltips

[Tooltip cycle; DC10c;...]