DARPA has awarded the iRobot Corporation a 3.3 million dollar contract to develop and build a robot that is soft and flexible enough to ooze through small openings or cracks and still be functional enough to perform DoD tasks. Some of the initial specs for the chem-bot design include "Morphability in all three dimensions"; "Architectures that can sense and morph responsively to openings, e.g., using local tactile sensing and flexible backbone structures; or architectures that themselves morph or dissolve, then reconstitute." Also of importance perhaps is the requirement for "Modest power requirements. ChemBots may be self-powered, self-consuming, or energy-scavenging."
Past attempts at morphing robot design have been carried out by intricate mechanicalBlobTheRobot999.html means somewhat similar to Hasbro’s Transformer action figures. This new endeavor seems to have the old science fiction horror film "The Blob" as its main inspiration.