iRobot's military Ember bots are tiny treaded hotspots

Remember the LANDroids initiative, which resulted in iRobot scoring a $2.5 million contract to create tiny, miniaturized bots that could crawl through battlefields and your nightmares? The company is showing off the early fruits of that contract, the Ember microbot, which is so small it slipped entirely under our radar. It's not quite as tiny as DARPA seemed to hope, which depicted a bot little bigger than a pack of cards, but shrinking a Packbot down to paperback size is no small task -- even it is a James Clavell paperback. The bot's primary function is to set up a roving military network on the battlefield, but, with an integrated webcam and extension via USB and SDIO, who knows what kind of functionality they'll provide. The goal is to get these down to $100 or less, and for that price we could see plenty of civilians investing in these just to keep an eye on the activities of household pet insurgents.

[Via Robot Stock News]

Gallery: iRobot Ember microbot

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[Quantumphysics @ May 18th 2009 7:33AM]

With all these new roving bots and predator drones, someday America's military will be reduced to a huge building with Saitek joysticks and LCD monitors.

[fucter @ May 18th 2009 7:39AM]

reduced? or enhanced?

[superhobo @ May 18th 2009 7:41AM]

I hope all countries do the same thing.

Then war will just be a huge LAN party.

[bdav @ May 18th 2009 7:48AM]

@superhobo

Assuming its coming anyway - couldn't we just have a big old game of CoD instead of going to war? Would be a lot quicker and cheaper....

[Wwhat @ May 18th 2009 8:13AM]

One day in texas they'll have bumper stickers that say "you'll get my iPhone remote robot-gun-controlling app if you pry it from my cold dead hands" I guess.

[BlurMagic @ May 18th 2009 2:28PM]

@Bdav

I'll second that motion. I love COD4. That would be the only scenario in which I would enlist for the armed forces. Ghillies in the mist, in my living room, in HD.

[geodesigner @ May 18th 2009 7:54AM]

I fail to understand the purpose of that.

[Jeff @ May 18th 2009 9:33AM]

The purpose of what?

The need for micro-site communications is vital. These can play a pivotal role in primary, secondary or tertiary communications. The addition of a webcam only helps to provide ground level surveillance at a lesser cost than a drone or other off site method. At approximately $100 they are certainly budget ready and any additional intel is always appreciated to ground platoons.

[Sarig @ May 18th 2009 7:39AM]

SKYNET IS COMING, AYYYEEEEEEE!

[Wwhat @ May 18th 2009 8:09AM]

And it's getting an attitude and demands iRobots to show off to his friends.

[94 taurus owner @ May 18th 2009 7:43AM]

interesting........................rolling Wifi^^

[mrclairyo @ May 18th 2009 8:12AM]

Nicce crocks.

[Ron @ May 18th 2009 8:38AM]

Crocs with socks, no less!

[Neg @ May 18th 2009 8:31AM]

Oh my god I want five.

--neg

[SiXiam @ May 18th 2009 1:52PM]

That will be $500...
Plus Ten-Thousand dollars shipping and handling!

[Eric @ May 18th 2009 9:00AM]

@superhobo, @bdav

A Taste of Armageddon:
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/episode/68706.html

[AT7 @ May 18th 2009 9:01AM]

crocs dude will be hearing from George Lucas' lawyers soon enough. Hopefully these bots dont get frightened by wookies

A7

[kal326 @ May 18th 2009 9:34AM]

Well as long as we don't give them weapons and teach them to play on train tracks I'm pretty sure these things will never lead to a robot uprising.

[Hackettman @ May 18th 2009 10:00AM]

Im wondering how fast they move though. Also what would it take to strap a self kill module to that sucker which just makes it blow up. Espionage bot if you ask me.

@bdav:
Nice.....But countries would go to war constantly if we did it CoD style....... Just for fun.... And I dont want my apartment building being handed over for a questionable camping kill.....

[Timerider @ May 18th 2009 11:12AM]

I had a Plantraco mini RC tank that was kinda like that. To bad it's discontinued. :(

[Grant G @ May 18th 2009 12:27PM]

This would be good for creating a low power mesh network on a battlefield and you could use these as relays. anything that will reduce a soldiers load, such as a smaller battery to power their com gear, the better.

[Jeffro @ May 18th 2009 12:43PM]

Not the nice stylus! Must be a WinMo fan. But WinMo fans don't wear Crocs, especially Crocs with socks do they? Regardless, this shows that to stop the bots from taking over the world all we need to do is to install more Railroad Tracks. That will stop at least the mini-bots from getting past them. We can be green and stop the mini-bots all in one fell swoop... what ever that means.

[anubis4d @ May 18th 2009 3:11PM]

I am SHURE you won´t fond OSAMA with those things, which is the porpouse of such deployment of bloogy freedom... this is terrible and I can only imagine how much people will die by the stupid conflicts from future governments...

[andres @ May 18th 2009 7:45PM]

wow, what you said made no sense. people will die by stupid conflicts of stupid governments whether this thing is deployed or not. its irrelevant to a small robot with wifi and a camera.

[D.C. Meese @ May 18th 2009 4:47PM]

"...tiny, miniaturized..."
Just slightly redundant.

[Wwhat @ May 18th 2009 7:52PM]

Not really, tiny is just a size classification, miniaturized means it's something that used to be bigger made smaller, which does no guarantee it's tiny.

[Robdog @ May 19th 2009 12:15AM]

They might get the BOM (Bill of Materials) down to $100, but to think these could be sold any where near $100 + tax is very, very wishful thinking.

[ven740 @ May 18th 2009 10:47PM]

Good idea too bad the camera set up can only look one direction at any one point in time .
they need to take a Q from bugs and put micro cameras looking in many directions at
one time .

[Extinction @ May 19th 2009 1:06AM]

Jesus H Christ. You could make internet access spread like a freaking virus. You could bring internet to third world countries in less than a week just by setting these guys loose. Just slap on a solar panel.