Now i’m not one to love all things labeled “nano”, but being a HUGE soccer (football!) fan, i can’t resist this piece of news.

The national institute of standards and technology (NIST) is now giving the public a chance to watch the second annual nano-soccer cup, where competitors from various research institutes will compete with tiny robots to complete various tasks. The nano-bots will be controlled via remote-control and react to changes in magnetic field, or through electric signals sent through the microchip arena (which is about the size of a single rice). The robots will compete in events such as the two millimeter dash, the slalom (dodging between obstacles to make it to the goal), ball handling skills, which involves moving balls into a goal. Much hope is tied to nanobots being a big thing in the medical field in the future, performing microsurgery and such, plus of course, they will play an intricate part in the BORG plan to assimilate all races (as long as 7of9 is there, i welcome my borg overlords).

It should be said though, that it would appear that they have slapped the nano-label on these things as a way to cash in on the nano-hype, as the actualy bots are several micrometer long (one micrometer is 1.000 nano-meters). They claim that because the robots actually weigh nano-GRAMS they can rightfully call it a nanobot competition, but to me it just seems that people are eager to call anything nano as it’s a pop-thing these days. You can see a nano-bot with a micrometer scale next to it in our image above (courtesy of NIST)

Be that as it may! It’s still darn impressive and i can highly recommend checking out their website. There they actually have pictures of the soccer ball to be used, the actual field and even sweet pictures last years nanobots that competed for nano-soccer glory.