DARPA funds R&D on... "Terminator 2's" T-1000?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ross Stapleton-Gray <ross () stapleton-gray com>
Date: March 24, 2007 1:03:34 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: DARPA funds R&D on... "Terminator 2's" T-1000?

If nothing else, the future of household vermin looks to be getting a  
lot bleaker, as the eventual transition of the technology into the  
commercial sector may produce a Roomba that can squeeze through  
centimeter-sized openings and lay fire on mice and rats...

http://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/BAA07%2D21/Modification%2002.html

"The ability to safely and covertly gain access to denied or hostile  
areas and perform useful tasks provides critical advantages to  
warfighters over a broad spectrum of military operations. An  
effective and logistically attractive means for gaining entry to  
denied areas is to deploy an unmanned platform, such as a robot.  
However, often the only available points of entry are small openings  
in buildings, walls, under doors, etc. In these cases, a robot must  
be soft enough to squeeze or traverse through small openings, yet  
large enough to carry an operationally meaningful payload. Current  
robotic platforms are constructed primarily from hard materials and,  
while capable of locomotion with embedded payloads, cannot change  
their physical dimensions to rapidly traverse arbitrary size/shape  
openings whose dimensions are much smaller than the robot itself and  
are not known a-priori.

In response to this challenge, the Defense Advanced Research Projects  
Agency (DARPA) is seeking innovative proposals to develop Chemical  
Robots (ChemBots): soft, flexible, mobile objects that can identify  
and maneuver through openings smaller than their static structural  
dimensions; reconstitute size, shape, and functionality after  
traversal; carry meaningful payloads; and perform tasks..."

...

"The Phase I milestone is:
1. Demonstrate a ChemBot, approximately the size (but not necessarily  
the form-factor) of a regulation softball (i.e., 30 cm circumference;  
10 cm diameter; 500 cm3 volume), that can:
   a) travel a distance of 5 meters at a speed of 0.25 meters/minute;
   b) achieve a 10-fold reduction in its largest dimension; and
   c) traverse through a 1 cm opening of arbitrary geometry and  
reconstitute its original size and shape, in 15 seconds..."




----
Ross Stapleton-Gray, Ph.D.
Stapleton-Gray & Associates, Inc.
http://www.stapleton-gray.com
http://www.sortingdoor.com






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