Scary Cool Tech Thread
Out of context: Reply #75
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- FredMcWoozy0
The mother of all goldmines. DARPA projects completed or in Dev over the past year.
http://www.darpa.mil/dso/program…
During military operations it can be important to gain covert access to denied or hostile space. Unmanned platforms such as mechanical robots are of limited effectiveness if the only available points of entry are small openings.
The goal of the Chemical Robots (ChemBots) Program is to create a new class of soft, flexible, mesoscale mobile objects that can identify and maneuver through openings smaller than their dimensions and perform various tasks.
The program seeks to develop a ChemBot that can perform several operations in sequence:
Travel a distance;
Traverse an arbitrary-shaped opening much smaller than the largest characteristic dimension of the robot itself;
Reconstitute its size, shape, and functionality after traversing the opening;
Travel a distance; and
Perform a function or task using an embedded payload.
This program creates a convergence between materials chemistry and robotics through the application of any one of a number of approaches, including gel-solid phase transitions, electro- and magneto-rheological materials, geometric transitions, and reversible chemical and/or particle association and dissociation.With ChemBots, our warfighters can gain access to denied spaces and perform tasks safely, covertly, and efficiently.