© 1999 Robert A. Freitas Jr. All Rights Reserved.

Robert A. Freitas Jr., Nanomedicine, Volume I: Basic Capabilities, Landes Bioscience, Georgetown, TX, 1999

8.4 Functional Navigation

Functional navigation allows a medical nanorobot to detect and respond to subtle variations in tissue characteristics, often in the absence of precise positional knowledge. Such tissue characteristics may include thermal, acoustic or barostatic, cytochemical or immunochemical, electrical (Section 4.9.3.3) or magnetic,¹²⁵⁶ mechanical or topological variations. A few of the many possibilities are described below.

Last updated on 20 February 2003