A "nanohand" is a small gripper, small enough to manipulate nanotubes and nanofibres. This movie show how to pick and place nanofibres using a nanohand, to construct a nanodevice: a super-probe for atomic force microscopy. It takes a lot of work to get this far; and much more to get further: how about a virtual reality world where you can pick nanotubes with your own hands, while the nanogripper does it with 10000 times smaller fingers? How about an assembly line, a factory for building nanotube devices? Two big european projects, Nanorac and Nanohand, are now trying to make this reality.

The video was filmed by Volkmar Eichhorn at Oldenburg University in their cool nanorobot-in-a-microscope system, using the new microgrippers from DTU, designed by Kenneth Carlson.

The work was published here: Nanotechnology 18 2007, page 345501.