Revolution in microchip technology

Microscopic robots that can navigate their way around the human body, or fly through the air like insects, gathering data instead of pollen, could become reality in just 30 years, if a pioneering European project based in Cambridge is successful.

Academics from Cambridge University and engineers from Japanese electronics giant Hitachi are working on ways of using single electron microchips with enormous processing power to revolutionise the way we use computers. The expected result is a microscopic chip, invisible to the naked eye, which is 10 times more powerful than any existing chip.