How do femtomachines 'think?'

[alhazred23]

Nanomachines, picomachines, femtomachines, what have you; all of these tiny little robots autonomously or semi-autonomously perform complex (sometimes very complex) tasks in a three-dimensional environment. It seems to me that they would need computers in them to do this

If they are constructed on the femtoscale, however, that makes their individual design features orders of magnitude smaller than atoms or even atomic nuclei. Construction materials can be explained by the presence of exotic, non-atomic matter states like Yarvex, but what computing technology do femtomachines use to operate?

 

[Wes]

Femtomachines don't think, they just behave in a pre-defined way because of the way they're shaped. Basically, they're complex, working submolecular structures--like a more intricate version of proteins.

Femtomachines are NOT robots.

 

[alhazred23]

That clears up one question... sort of...

Trillions of tiny femtomachines are distributed in the air, allowing anywhere to become a control panel with a simple swirl of a person's finger. A ship can use the system to sense what is happening throughout the interior, thus giving it more information to use for environmental control, security, and communication. Using the nodal system, a ship's computer may manifest herself anywhere on the ship in physical or holographic form. This system is also used to decorate the interior of some ships.

If femtomachines are not actually 'robots,' but rather simply behave in a particular manner because of their shape, then how are they used to sense their environments? I can see ways this could be done; using femtomachines as building blocks of 'fake matter' to create a sensory apparatus on the nanoscale, or simply scanning to determine their location and disposition, which would give a general idea of the area they're dispersed in. Still I'd like to know how this is done.

Also, how are femtomachines in the Nodal System manipulated to form nano- or macroscale objects, if they're basically just 'dumb' building blocks? If they behave like proteins, then they can probably change shape to serve different 'chemical' tasks, but what mechanism is used to induce this, and how are they driven through the air into the desired configuration?

(Hopefully) moving higher on the intelligence scale, what sorts of computing schemes go into Nanomachines and Picomachines, then? At the picoscale, design features are on the scale where the total machine is still probably constructed from exotic materials or a combination of exotic materials and atomic matter. On the nanoscale, design features are on the scale where the machine could be constructed totally of atomic matter. Both of these machine types perform tasks that arguably could not be accomplished without some level of dynamic programmability, and both types of machine have been described as 'robots.' (picorobots in Pico-Jelly and nanobots in the NAM Nano-Constructor System)

 

[Anti]

Perhaps they could be controlled from an external location via "waves/vibrations" (Electromagnetic Spectrum) much like how H20 molecules are excited by micro-waves? Various waveform oscillations would cause a different type of "behavior"/"attribute" of said femtobots. If they're this small - Then they would technically be quite open to the same sort of vibrations that are the core of "String Theory" and "M-Theory".

This idea doesn't explain if they think - or how they think, but it does explain a way that they can be externally/wirelessly controlled by a larger computer or organism.

 

[OsakanOne]

then how are they used to sense their environments?

I would liken their function to self-modifying code, adapting based on the environment variables fed into it.

You must remember that despite what religion and culture teaches us, complexity arises from simplicity: We are built of atoms and atoms of simpler still sub-atomic particles.

It doesn't take something greater to produce something lesser: Even in factories, you can see this. All they do is reposition and shape and condition matter. They're not capable of "more" than the end product and are not intelligent.


As to the actual method of functionality, I would suggest it would be a combination of "dumb" and "smart" automatic self-modifying psudo-neural networks: a mesh of different nodes, perhaps in the billions, that talk to one another. That is, after all, how our minds function.

And we all know that a well fed mind is the greatest computer of all.