One wobbles forward as a toddler does. The other’s movement is more like a car’s. Such motions might not seem like much, but getting tiny molecular constructions to execute them is quite a feat, say scientists from two independent teams that have demonstrated the molecular motions.
To create their walking nanobot, Ludwig Bartels of the University of California, Riverside and his colleagues there and at Kansas State University in Manhattan retrofitted a benzene-based molecule so that it has what amounts to two feet, each a sulfur atom.