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iRobot's Shape-Shifting Blob 'Bot Takes Its First Steps

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Quote:This is by far one of the coolest and weirdest robot prototypes we at IEEE Spectrum have ever seen.

Meet iRobot's soft, shape-shifting robot blob. It rolls around and changes shape, and it will be able to squeeze through tiny cracks in a wall when the project is finished.

(Skip the first 1:50 minutes of the video above to see the blob in action.)

Researchers from iRobot and the University of Chicago discussed their palm-sized soft robot, known as a chemical robot, or chembot, at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems yesterday. It's "the first demonstration of a completely soft, mobile robot using jamming as an enabling technology," they write in a paper presented at the conference.

The concept of "jamming skin enabled locomotion" is explained quite nicely in the video. The polymer used for the bot’s stretchy skin is off-the-shelf silicone two-part rubber.

By controlling the parts of the blob that "inflate," the researchers can make it roll.
The video shows the project as it was about a year ago. The current stage has a bit different design and is moving toward the ability to include sensors or even connect different blobs together, but those details are sketchy.

When asked about the usefulness of such a bot, iRobot researcher Annan Mozeika promptly answered, "to squeeze into small holes." And who wants to do that? DARPA, of course. End of questions.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/robotics/rob...ng-blob-chembot

Wow so now we've got robots with guns (Swords), robots that can talk with eachother wirelessly in packs (Drones), Robots with extreme balance (Bigg Dogg) and robots that can jump 20 feet high (Precision Urban Hopper), robots that can beat a grandmaster in chess (Big Blue), a robot that can process the library of congress in a minute (Carnivore) and a robot powered by human flesh (EATR) along with super strength, super hearing, super speed, limited social skills, they can connect to DoD data wirelessly, the can see through walls, monitor fear, can be made so small to enter your bloodstream, they have technology to read your mind (kinda) and now this blob-o-motion-bot?!

This is really neat and really frightening all at the same time - the fact that most of this is military financed puts me more in the realm of fear though. Does anyone have a manual on how to fight a super robot?

ElectroMagnetic Pulse weaponry.
Pretty easy to build if you have any tech ability and plans are available online. Just don't test them around electronics that you want to keep. If they are hardened against EMP's then all you have to do is have a little bit of Tesla tech knowledge with scalar wave conjugation to fry bots in their tracks. Scalar, aka longitudinal, wave EMF are not affected by conventional EM fields or shielding. 2 separate signals of the frequency and power that you wish to use but 180 deg out of phase when crossed will reproduce your original signal at the point of interference with essentially no losses.

Apparently Tesla always used his pressure scalar waves by his apparatus.
For his remotely controlled boat the radio signal was used as power and
control. Yes, batteries for storage but being supplied by wireless.
Tesla said wireless power or radio was like sound waves in the ether or
medium and he was the only one. A good look at the boat circuit might
help on how in the recovery of the signal is done.
The transmitter is apparently a long coil of wire.
The cone or flat type with no connection at the center
which is an antenna configuration is connected to a loop of as little as
one primary loop. Tesla called it stressing the medium and is apparently
more akin to static stress and as a series of pulses operated on
pulsed detection for reception.
EXTRA:
Spooky Tesla Spirit Radio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFxBmEpGIBw
See football coil among normal spiral (pressure wave)
receiver coils.
ED: The pressure wave transmitted in the
'ether' can result in physical mechanical pressure.

Here's a new upgrade for cyber-kind. Fast legged robots.. again from Boston Dynamics.

Quote:DARPA-Funded 'Cheetah' Breaks Speed Record For Legged Robots
Posted by Soulskill on Monday March 05, @05:57PM
from the enjoy-your-nightmares-tonight dept.

Boston Dynamics, a Waltham, Massachusetts technology firm and DARPA contractor, announced Monday that it's broken the speed record for running, legged robots. Its new four-legged creation is Cheetah, a robot that can run at 18 miles an hour*, far faster than the 13.1 miles per hour record set by MIT in 1989. The video it's released shows Cheetah running on a treadmill, but the company hopes to both increase the robot's speed and take it onto outdoor terrain in the near future.

Boston Dynamics rose to fame with its four-legged cargo robot Big Dog which showed an uncanny ability to walk over terrain and recover its footing even when it slips or is kicked. The firm followed up with Petman, a two-legged prototype that applies the same technology to human-style walking.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/03...ged-robots

FYI: Top Notch Gold Medalist Olympic Sprinters can run ~23 MPH but only for 100 - 200 metres.

Creepy but not quite Smart Dust and Flying Orb creepy.. unless combined with some other tech like jumping really high, invisibility cloaks, blob-o-motion and flesh eating; all available making for an out of box Terminator Predator set to be loosed.

(11-04-2009 06:31 PM)FastTadpole Wrote: [ -> ]so now we've got robots with ...limited social skills

This is the machine ability that really creeps me out.

From T3:

Quote:John Connor: What, you were just dicking with me?
Terminator: Anger is more useful than despair.
John Connor: What?
Terminator: Basic psychology is among my sub-routines.