Image: American Chemical Society
Think of it as robotic chemistry. Molecules that are almost unfathomably small nonetheless have structural properties that can be exploited in our macroscale world. Here, for example, a chemical reaction could take the form of an electrical switch, while other chemical reactions may produce particles that function as propellant for tiny rockets many orders of magnitude smaller than a human cell.In its latest Reactions video, the American Chemical Society offers a nice overview:Nanomachines are a pretty wild future that happens to be here now largely intact. The question is more of how they can be exploited in meaningful or useful ways. This is much less certain.