Guest Editorial: Special Issue on Nanorobotics

Research activities on nanorobotics comprise an emerging interdisciplinary technology area raising new scientific challenges and promising revolutionary advancement in applications such as medicine, biology, and industrial manufacturing. Nanorobots can be defined as intelligent systems with overall dimensions at or below the micrometer range that are made of assemblies of nanoscale components while exploiting the physics at such a scale, or as larger platforms capable of robotic operations at the nanoscale. In an effort to disseminate the current advances in this specialized field of robotics, and to stimulate discussion on the future research directions while invigorating research interests towards the development and applications of nanorobotic systems, a special issue of this issue of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS (T-RO) has been dedicated to recent developments in nanorobotics. This Special Issue presents a total of 15 papers in the most active areas of research in nanorobotics. Six papers are dedicated to actuation presenting recent advances in the implementation, control, and modelling of actuation methods suited for such robots operating in low Reynolds hydrodynamic conditions and, more specifically, helical propulsion with the force being induced from a rotating magnetic field, resonant magnetic actuation, and self-propelled microjets and platinum catalytic mobile nanorobots. Four papers cover the very active field of research in nanorobotics is in biological and medical applications. The remainder look at industrial applications of micro/nanorobotic manipulation systems.