Well this is just great. One of our few remaining advantages over the robots who wish to enslave us -- the ability to run away and cower in an inaccessible location -- may soon be gone forever, if
DARPA's bid for softball-sized, morphing 'ChemBots' proves successful. The government's mad scientist wing wants proposals for a soft, flexible bot that is able to collapse down to a tenth of its original size, crawl through a one centimeter opening at a quarter of a meter per
hour minute, and bulk back up to its original size in under 15 seconds. Think you're up for the challenge? White papers are due on May 3rd of this year, and since liquid metal robots won't be feasible until about the year 2029, interested parties better get cracking.
[Via
The Raw Feed]
The current generation of robots, whether they're the gun-carrying or child-coddling variety, come in all sorts of shapes and sizes to suit their intended purpose. But if research going on at Tufts University comes to fruition, future robots might feature designs that are rather more flexible. Scientists at the school are working on so-called "chemical robots" with no solid parts. Chembots could squeeze under doors, slither through cracks in walls, and even squirm into your orifices, performing internal diagnoses before slowly dissolving away, leaving nothing more than a feeling of creepy violation behind. What about assuming the shape and voice of John Connor's adopted mother? We're hoping that's still a few years off.
