What is OmniNerd?

Welcome! OmniNerd's content is generated by you, the reader. Through voting and moderation we strive to highlight the nerdiest of what's around and provide content that's a little more thought provoking than other sites.

Submit New Content

Voting Booth

Choosing Sarah Palin as a Vice Presidential running mate was?

View Results, All Polls
34 votes, 5 comments
7
Nerd-Its
+ -

Contract Awarded for Chemical Robotics Development

Newspaper current event by gnifyus on 21 June 2008, tagged as technology, military, robotics, darpa, chem bot, and the blob

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 mechanical 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.

Star This to Save in Your Profile Favorite
Thread parent sort order:
Highest Voted : Lowest Voted : Oldest : Newest
Thread verbosity:
Expand All : Minimize Replies to Comments
1 Nerd-It - +
Terminator by VnutZ :: NR8

Combined with the blood sensing technologies and the other stuff (same link) developed by the UK, I would imagine DARPA's winner is simply going to unveil the T-1000 that will soon kill us all.

Posted 21 June 2008, Hide, Reply