News

[Internet]

Thursday 19th June 2008

US military sponsors bendy-spy bots 11:42AM, Thursday 19th June 2008

The US government is sponsoring the creation of a new type of robot able to squeeze through small gaps and carry out covert surveillance.

iRobot, the firm responsible for the Roomba cleaning bot, will be given $3.3 million "to develop a soft, flexible, mobile robot" the size of a cricket ball, able to cover five metres in 20 minutes and squeeze through openings much smaller than it but resume its normal size on the other side. Basically, the firm is developing a robo-mouse spy.

"During military operations it can be important to gain covert access to denied or hostile space. Unmanned



ADVERTISEMENT

platforms such as mechanical robots are of limited effectiveness if the only available points of entry are small openings," says, Mitchell Zakin, program manager of The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which awarded the grant.

"We believe that a new class of soft, flexible, meso-scale mobile objects that can identify and manoeuvre through openings smaller than their dimensions to perform various tasks will be quite valuable in many missions."

DARPA is the department of defence department responsible for investigating and promoting new technology, a mandate which has already resulted in the inspired madness of unmanned car contests, and "Big Dog", a wobbly legged wonder able to cover a variety of different terrains.

Stuart Turton

Submit to: Digg | Slashdot | Del.icio.us | Technorati