Build a pixel nanobot

Help prepare yourself for nanotechnology. In the near future you may be building very small robots to operate in microscopic, cellular and even molecular space.

If you have an old computer that will run Quick Basic or one that is newer which will run a more advanced language like Visual Basic then before spending money on parts you can explore the realm of robots by building a pixel nanobot.

I was surprised at all of the things I could do with a pixel nanobot on screen without having to commit money to motors and gears. In fact by building pixel nanobot first I was able to save a lot of time and money when I built my real world robot by exploring the difference between autonomic and cognitive jobs. Besides, if you can't control a pixel nanobot on your own computer screen then why bother trying to control a robot in the real world?

The pixel nanobot serves as the center for both sensors and actuators capable of assessing conditions and executing actions the same as its hardware counterpart.

Although a single pixel can do lots of interesting things if one pixel is not enough you can another nanobot or even create a nanobot swam to handle one or more tasks which are more demanding, like finding and eliminating a stealthy virus.

Step 1 Create the pixel nanobot(s)

Your screen, depending on its resolution, has thousand of pixels to work with. The pixel nanobot I built uses pixel color for identification and to keep track of where the nanobot has been.

I built my first pixel nanobot by setting all of the empty pixels to gray and then setting a obe pixel at a random location to one of 16 basic colors but using RGB code notation you can create more than 65,000 individual nanobots which can be uniquely identified.

Here is the code idea I used.

Set background color to gray
backcolor = &H8000000F&

Find a random location on the screen
x = rnd * scalewidth
y = rnd * scaleheight

Set the color of the pixel at that location to whatever color you want.
pset (x,y),QBcolor(0)

The next step is to give the nanobot a sensor.

Comments

[haboque]

can u send me a sample file on this instructable...I do not quite understand how to do it...

[nikielectronics]

It is cool but virus in my program is not coloured and you have one error in code.

[watermelon]

Pixel nanobots, like real nanobots, need one or more unique characteristics to distinguish themselves, the rest of the world and each other from their prey. The word "Get" is a Visual Basic reserve word, but there are many clues to indicate that the apostrophe for the comment line is missing. If you would like to debug more code, please let me know.