Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Utility fog also known as the nanofog is a hypothetical collection of tiny robots together
performing a certain function. It is a highly advanced extension of nanotechnology, which
the Technocratic Union has developed as the ultimate multi-purpose tool

It is a user-friendly, completely programmable collection of avogadro (6 x1023) numbers

of nano-machines that can form a vast range of machinery, from wristwatches to
spaceships. It can simulate any material from gas, liquid, and solid, and it can even be
used in sufficient quantities to implement the ultimate in virtual reality. ITx researchers
suggest that more complex applications could include uploading human minds into
planet-sized collections of Utility Fog active, polymorphic material.

Utility Fog can be designed as a conglomeration of 100-micron robotic cells called

foglets. Such robots could be built with the techniques of molecular nanotechnology.
Controllers with processing capabilities of 1000 MIPS per cubic micron, and electric
motors with power densities of one milli-watt per cubic micron are assumed.

Fig 1.1 Arrangement of utility fog.

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Utility Fog should be capable of simulating most everyday materials, dynamically
changing its form and proper ties, and forms a substrate for an integrated virtual reality
and tele-robotics. It has a body about the size of a human cell and 12 arms sticking out in
all directions.

A bucketful of such robots might form a "robot crystal" by linking their arms up into a
lattice structure. Now take a room, with people, furniture, and other objects in it it's still
mostly empty air. Fill the air completely full of robots. With the right programming, the
robots can exert any force in any direction on the surface of any object. They can support
the object, so that it apparently floats in the air. They can exert the same resisting forces
that elbows and fingertips would receive from the arms and back of the chair. A program
running in the Utility Fog can thus simulate the physical existence of an object.

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 Chapter 2

HISTORY

Utility fog is a term suggested by Dr. Josh Storrs Hall in 2001 to describe a hypothetical
collection of tiny robots, together performing a certain function. The idea of robotic
swarms was detailed as early as in 1964 by Stanislaw Lem in the novel The Invincible,
and explored in some recent SciFi novels, such as Prey (2002), written by Michael
Crichton.

Hall thought of it as a replacement for car seatbelts. The robots would be microscopic,
with extending arms reaching in several different directions, and could perform three-
dimensional lattice reconfiguration. Grabbers at the ends of the arms would allow the
robots (or foglets) to mechanically link to one another and share both information and
energy, enabling them to act as a continuous substance with mechanical and optical
properties that could be varied over a wide range. Each foglet would have substantial
computing power, and would be able to communicate with its neighbors.

In the original application as a replacement for seatbelts, the swarm of robots would be
widely spread-out, and the arms loose, allowing air flow between them. In the event of a
collision the arms would lock into their current position, as if the air around the
passengers had abruptly frozen solid. The result would be to spread any impact over the
entire surface of the passenger's body.

This is a concept similar in function, though different in detail, to that of the "crash field"
presented in Larry Niven's science fiction short story "The Soft Weapon" (1967), and is
also similar in function to the inertial dampers of Star Trek and other science fiction
series.

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A suggestion was made by Jim Al-Khalili that the chameleonic external surface of a
TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space) could be composed of utility fog in
the programme "How To Make A Tardis", broadcast as part of the nostalgic Doctor Who
Night on BBC2 late in 1999.

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 Chapter 3

UTILITY FOG

3.1 THE BASIC IDEA BEHIND UTILITY FOG

Hall’s conception starts with a little robot called a Foglet, which consists of a human cell-
sized device with twelve arms pointing in all directions. These nanobots are intelligent
and can merge their computational capacities with each other to create a distributed
intelligence. Each foglet is mostly made of telescoping arms 50 microns long & 5
microns in diameter and a spherical central body of 10 microns. Some of the arms would
grip the ends of other foglet arms for power and communications connections while the
others cling to the original structure. The individual foglets would take up only 2 to 3%
of the space in the volume they fill, leaving the rest of the space for air and light. Hence,
a room filled with Utility Fog would be transparent up close, somewhat cloudy at a
distance. You could fill a house with them and they would be unobtrusive.

Fig 3.1 Visualization of foglet with arms retracted and extended.

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With all the computing power contained in these trillions of foglets they could be
programmed with a wide spectrum of behaviors that mimic materials of different mass,
motion, appearance, and function. Each foglet can sense the forces along each and every
arm and depending on how they are programmed, can react according to the magnitude
and relation of those forces.

3.2 COMPONETS OF FOGLET

Each Foglet has twelve arms, arranged as the faces of a dodecahedron. The arms swivel
on a universal joint at the base, and the gripper at the end cart rotate about the arm’s axis.
Each arm thus has four degrees of freedom, plus opening and closing the gripper. The
only load-carrying motor on each axis is the extension/retraction motor. The swivel and
rotate axes are weakly driven, able to position the arm in free air but not drive any kind of
load; however, there are load holding brakes on these axes. The gripper is a hexagonal
structure with three fingers, mounted on alternating faces of the hexagon. Two Foglets
"grasp hands" in an interleaved six-finger grip.

Fig 3.2 Foglet having 12 arms.

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Since the fingers are designed to match the end of the other arm, this provides a relatively
rigid connection; forces are only transmitted axially through the grip. When at rest, the
Foglets form a regular lattice structure. If the bodies of the Foglets are thought of as
atoms, it is a "face-centered cubic" crystal formation, where each atom touches 12 other
atoms. The spaces bounded by the arms form alternate tetrahedron sand octahedrons,
both of which are rigid shapes.

Fig 3.3 Connecting structure of a foglet.

As depicted by fig 3.2 one can see the dodecahedral structure of the utility fog. The arms
of the foglets are having grippers which are used for interconnection between two foglets.
The connection sockets are used for tight combination of two arms of different foglets.

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3.2.1 The Grip

Grip is the most important part of the foglet as the whole arrangement depends upon the
interconnection of the grips.

Fig 3.4 The grip of a foglet.

The Grip consists of basic four divisions. The first one is coupler which is used for the
communication and power controlling purpose. It can be considered as the head of this
division. Then we have Optical Waveguide for communication from the user so that it
could get the commands for its performance. The power and electrical transmission lines
are used for the power supply in this foglet and finally we have couplers which are used
for locking of the two foglets together.

3.3 THE INTERNAL SCHEMATIC OF FOGLET

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The internal diagram of a foglet which is the basic component of a utility fog is shown in
the figure below.

Fig 3.5 The internal structure of a foglet.

The structure consists of a computer which may be a microcontroller , control lines for
carrying the control information from computer to other parts of foglets, fuel tank and
line, oxygen filter, communication lines , motors, power lines etc.

3.4 THE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS OF FOGLET

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Most currently proposed nano-technological designs are based on carbon. Carbon is a
marvelous atom for structural purposes, forming a crystal (diamond) which is very stiff
and strong. However, a Fog built of diamond would have a problem which nano
mechanical designs of a more conventional form do not pose: the Fog has so much
surface area exposed to the air that if it were largely diamond, especially on the surface, it
would amount to a "fuel-air explosive". Therefore the Foglet is designed so that its
structural elements, forming the major component of its mass, are made of aluminum
oxide, a refractory compound using common elements.

The structural elements form an exoskeleton, which besides being a good mechanical
design allows us to have an evacuated interior in which more sensitive nano-mechanical
components can operate. Of course, any macroscopic ignition source would vaporize the
entire foglet; but as long as more energy is used vaporizing the exoskeleton than is gained
burning the carbon-based components inside, the reaction cannot spread.

3.5 THE MODES OF OPERATION OF A FOGLET

The Nano-constructs operate in two modes “native", and "fog".

1) Native mode
In "native" mode, individual foglets move into different positions and perform certain
mechanical operations depending on what object it is forming. For example, if it
forms part of a table, then it would be motionless and locked. If the object was a fan,
then most of the structure would remain locked, and only the foglets between the two
parts would need to move. With a suit made of Fog, you might wrestle alligators,
cheating a little by having the suit amplify your movements as it protects you from
the alligator's teeth.

2) Fog mode

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 In "fog" mode, the foglets do not move, but act more like pixels on a television screen
-they "pixelate". The foglets vary other properties according to which part of the
object they are representing, generally transmitting information and sound. A Fog-
filled room would contain 90% air, and surround its occupant with a display screen
with 100 micron resolution. Meanwhile, each litre of foglets behind the display would
contain about a billion times the processing power of a 286 PC, making possible
some pretty impressive virtual reality simulations.

3.6 COMMUNICATION AND CONTROL

As the commands or instructions are received from the user, they are processed by the
programmed processors in the foglets. Then calculations and analysis regarding the
execution of commands are done, e.g.: mode of operation, number of foglets required &
position of each foglet. The results are then passed among other foglets, which now
arrange themselves in an order so as to perform specific operations. Thus a utility fog is
formed.

Fig 3.6 The communicating foglets.

Fog moves by setting up a seed-shaped zone around it. The Foglets in the zone move with
the object, forming a fairing which makes the motions around it smoother. If the object is
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moving fast, the Fog around its path will compress to let it go by. The air does not have
time to move in the Fog matrix and so the motion is fairly efficient. Each moving layer of
robots is similarly passing the next layer along, so each layer adds another increment of
the velocity difference of adjacent layers.

After the operation is completed, the fog again breaks up into the individual foglets.

3.7 PROPERTIES OF FOG

The foglets associated with utility fog has following properties:-

• Self-reproducing and Self-generating.
• Power: - Hydrogen (stored) combined with atmospheric oxygen to produce
energy and collects water vapour for its separation. It requires 700kw power
consumed/cc for movement.
• Absolute movement speed 1m/sec.
• Tensile Strength: 1000 psi.
• Can sustain 100 m/s sheer per mm of thickness.
• Specific gravity : 0.2
• Can contract up to 40% in any linear direction reducing overall volume by factor
of 5.
• Components Proposed:- Carbon, Aluminum oxide.
• Microcontroller is used.
• Foglet though heavier than air, it is programmed to simulate its physical property
so that you can’t feel it.
• Individual foglets can communicate with each other.

3.8 ADVANTAGES OF UTILITY FOG

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The major advantage of space-filling Fog is safety. In a car fog forms a dynamic form-
fitting cushion that protects better than any seatbelt of nylon fibers. An appropriately built
house filled with Fog could even protect its inhabitants from the (physical) effects of a
nuclear weapon within 95% or so of its lethal blast area. There are many more mundane
ways the Fog can protect its occupants, not the least being physically to remove bacteria,
mites, pollen, and so forth, from the air. A Fog filled home would no longer be the place
that most accidents happen. First, by performing most household tasks using fog as an
instrumentality, the cuts and falls that accompany the use of knives, power tools, ladders,
and so forth, can be eliminated.

Secondly, the other major class of household accidents, young children who injure
themselves out of ignorance, can be avoided by a number of means. A child who climbed
over a stair rail would float harmlessly to the floor. A child could not pull a book case
over on itself, falling over would not be among the bookcase’s repertoire. Power tools,
kitchen implements, and cleaning chemicals would not normally exist; they or their
analogues would be called into existence when needed and vanish instead of having to be
cleaned and put away.

Outside the home, the possibilities are, if any thing, greater. One can easily imagine"
industrial Fog" which forms a factory. It would consist of larger robots. Unlike domestic
fog, which would have the density and strength of balsa wood, industrial fog could have
bulk properties resembling hardwood or aluminum. A nanotechnology- age factory would
probably consist of a mass of fog with special-purpose reactors embedded in it, where
high-energy chemical transformations could take place. All the physical manipulation,
transport, assembly, and so forth would be done by the fog.

3.9 LlMITATIONS OF UTILITY FOG

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When discussing something as far outside of’ everyday experience as the Utility Fog, it is
a good idea to delineate both sides of the boundary. The Fog is capable of so many
literally amazing things, there are a few of the things it isn’t capable of:

1). Fog couldn’t simulate a drill bit cutting through hardwood. It would be able to cut
the hole, but the process would be better described as intelligent sandpaper.

2). Anything requiring both high strength and low volume. A parachute could not be
made of Fog (unless, of course, all the air were filled with Fog, in which case one
could simply fly).

3). Anything requiring high heat. A Fog fire blazing merrily away on Fog logs in a
fireplace would feel warm on the skin a few feet away; it would feel the same to a
hand inserted into the "flame".

4). Anything requiring molecular manipulation or chemical transformation.

5). Foglets are simply on the wrong scale to play with atoms. In particular, they
cannot reproduce themselves.

6). Foglets can only be seen using holographic lenses.

7). They cannot form food or water. Eating it would be like eating the same amount of
sand or sawdust.

8). They may accumulate in the lungs of living beings and can cause several health
related hazards.

The machine works "not wisely but too well," manifesting all the deeply buried
subconscious desires of the Krell(A play writer) to destroy each other.

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Utility Fog will provide humans with powers that. approximate those of the fictional
Krell machine. Luckily, we have centuries of literary tradition to guide us around the
pitfalls of hubris made reality. We must study this tradition, or we may be doomed to
repeat it a truth that is by no means limited to the Utility Fog or indeed to nanotechnology
in general. The first thing we can do is to require fully conscious, unequivocal commands
for the Fog to take any action. Beyond that, we can try to suggest some of the protocols
that maybe useful in managing the fog in a situation where humans are interacting in
close physical proximity. Even if we have solved the problem of translating one’s
individual wishes, however expressed, into the quadrillions of sets of instructions to
individual foglets to accomplish what one desired, the problem of who gets to control
which foglets is probably a much more contentious one.

We can physicalize the psychological concept of "personal space". The foglets within
some distance of each person would be under that person’s exclusive control; personal
spaces could not merge except by mutual consent. This single protocol could prevent
most crimes of violence in our hypothetical Fog City.

A corollary point is that physically perpetrated theft would be impossible in a fog world.
It would still be possible by informational means, i.e. fraud, hacking, etc; but the fog
could be programmed to put ownership on the level of a physical law. Not that it really
makes any sense to think of stealing a fog-mode object, anyway. Ownership and control
of the fog need not be any more complex than the bundles of rights currently associated
with everything from land to corporate stock.

Indeed, much of the programming of the fog will need to have the character of physical
laws. In order for the enormous potential complexity to be comprehensible and thus
usable to human beings, it needs to be organized by simple but powerful principles,
which must be consonant with the huge amount of hard-wired information processing our
sensory systems per form. For example, it would be easy to move furniture (or buildings)
by manipulating an appropriately sized scale model, and easy to observe the effects by
watching the model. However, the fog could just as easily have flooded the room with

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100 kHz sound and frequency-scaled the echoes down into the human auditory range. A
bat would have no trouble with this kind of "scale model", but to humans it’s just noise.

It will be necessary, in general, to arrange the over all control of the fog to be extremely
distributed, as local as possible, robust in the presence of failure. When we realize that a
single cubic inch of fog represents a computer network of 16 million processors, the
concept of hierarchical control with human oversight can be seen to be hopelessly
inadequate. A goric distributed control algorithms offer one possible solution.

3.10 APPLICATIONS OF UTILITY FOG

Utility fog finds its application in many tasks and with increasing research and
development these are expected to be a central technology in near future. The various
applications of the utility fog are as follows:-

1). Utility fog can act as shelter, clothing telephone computer and automobile.

2). It can form your Home TV.

Fig 3.7 The foglets arranging themselves in desired structures.

3). Inside spacesuit it may help to manage air pressure and make motion easy.

4). It also prevents the space researchers from floating out of the ship.

5). An appropriately house filled with fog will prevent its hosts from micro-diseases.
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 Fig 3.8 A foglet taking action on microbes.

6). Fog can look after children playing in the house for safety.

7). It can make car-seatbelts for safety.

8). It can change the appearance of the car.

9). It can help the scientist to have a better control over the climate, and may be used
as an effective tool against global warming.

Chapter 4

RESEARCH ISSUES

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4.1 RESEARCH ISSUES

Utility fog is composed of minute particles called as foglets, which are of size of 100
microns, which arrange themselves as per the requirement of the users. Manufacturing
such small particles involves certain design issues, some of which are:-

1). Building individually controllable, molecular-sized, physical actuators, arms,

motors, gears and the like.

2). Building molecular-sized computers to control the foglets.

3). As the name suggests the transparency of a mass of foglets should be almost equal
to that of natural fog.

Fig 4.1 A 100 micron sized foglet.

4). Availability of holographic goggles or contact lenses - to recognize the foglets.

5). Self-reproducing technology expected to be used with the utility fog, should be
controllable.
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 6). There should be availability of a trillion or quadrillion of foglets per house.

7). Mass production– Cost to be <$0.00000000001 a piece (foglet).

4.2 THE CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS & FUTURE OF UTILITY FOG

Presently INTEL is working on Claytronics, an emerging field of engineering concerning

reconfigurable microscale robots. The researchers propose to make moving, physical,
three-dimensional replicas of people or objects, so lifelike that human senses would
accept them as real. When you finished using a replica for one purpose, you could
transform it into another useful shape. A human replica could morph into a desk or a
chair. This would be a step towards utility fog and systems
for synthetic reality.

The basic unit is catom i.e. claytronic atom. Researchers have already created a catom
that is 40 millimeters in diameter.

Fig 4.1 An array of interconnected foglets expected to be realized by mid 2030.

The goal is to eventually produce catoms that are less than one millimeters in diameter-
small enough to produce convincing replicas. The miniaturized versions of such atoms
are foglets, which combine to form utility fog.

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Utility fog will thus provide human with powers that approximate those of a fictional
machine. This technology is going to have very sound effect on future and the researches
are going on this technology to make it more compatible and sophisticated.

So in the future of about twenty years from now it is expected to be in a very good
operating mode with many of the flaws being eliminated and we could see the wonders
which can be done by this technology.

No one expects a cloud of this magical stuff tomorrow, but industry sources believe that
the UF development could become reality by mid-2030s or before.

REFERENCES

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The contents of this report have been referred from the following:-

 K. Eric Drexler, "Molecular Engineering: An Approach to the Development of

General Capabilities for Molecular Manipulation".
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0219.html

 J. S. Foster, J. E. Frommer and P. C. Arnett, "Molecular manipulation using a

tunneling microscope".
http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Utility-fog

 A. K. Dewdney, "Nanotechnology: wherein molecular computers control tiny

circulatory submarines".
http://www.nanotech-now.com/utility-fog.htm

 Grant Fjermedal and MacMil-lan, “The Tomorrow Makers”.

http://future.wikia.com/wiki/Utility_fog

 D. M. Eigler and E. K. Schweizer, "Positioning Single Atoms with a Scanning

Tunnelling Microscope".
http://www.pivot.net/~jpierce/aspects_of_ufog.htm

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