From the monthly archives:

August 2009

Agile robots, dexterous robots (with videos)

August 27, 2009

Forget about clumsy, lumbering robots. Think fast, precise, and acrobatic.
[Update: only potentially disturbing videos.]

See also the series on High-Throughput Nanomanufacturing —

— Small Parts (with videos, no robots)
— Assembly (with videos, no robots)
— Assembling larger products (with video of a very fast robot)

And…

Why I hate “nanobots”

[...]

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Comments on Science, Engineering,
and Innovation for The Drucker Institute

August 20, 2009

I was recently invited by the Drucker Institute to outline my thinking on innovation, and I discussed how managers can help to resolve some surprisingly deep communication problems at the interface between science and engineering. They’ve posted a two-minute extract as a audio clip their current Drucker Apps page; it’s in the right-hand column.
The Drucker [...]

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“Nanotechnologies in Russia”
interview now available

August 13, 2009

A few months ago, I gave an interview for the scientific journal “Nanotechnologies in Russia”, and the result has now been posted at www.nanometer.ru, a leading Russian-language portal dedicated to nanotechnology. This website provides a window into nanotechnology in Russia; I’ve linked the home page in English here (a Google translation).
The interview centers on [...]

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Asia and the elements of innovation

August 6, 2009

The worldwide management consulting firm McKinsey & Company recently invited me to write about prospects for innovation in Asia, as a contribution to an ongoing discussion of where the world’s primary centers of innovation will be in the coming decades.
Today, they posted the result, “Asia and the elements of innovation”. I focus on China, and [...]

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Evolutionary Capacity:
Why organisms cannot be like machines

August 2, 2009

I‘ve just posted a paper on evolution and the organization of complex systems at E-drexler.com. The paper discusses things like factories, paint, and conjoined twins to illustrate four crucial differences between machine-like and life-like systems.
As an update, I added a preface that outlines the thesis of the paper and explains why the title (“Biological and [...]

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