Jul 9 2008Great, Just Great: DARPA Awards Grant To Make T-1000's, Kill Us In Our Sleep
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently awarded Tufts University a $3.3 million contract to develop T-1000 shape-shifters so they can squeeze under doors and through cracks and shit to kill us all. Part of the original DARPA solicitation for proposals follows.
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.
You thought I was joking, didn't you? Well I wasn't. And I wasn't joking when I just boarded up the door and windows of my apartment either either. I'll be damned if I'm done in by some mercury-ass blob. Ha, I forgot to let the girlfriend in. I can hear her out front pounding...the UPS guy. What a freaking slut.
Hit the links for more in-depth articles that I stopped reading because they were creeping me out.
Tufts to develop morphing 'chemical robots' [physorg]
via
Shape-shifting, organ-probing chembots coming soon [engadget]
DARPA Solicitation For Proposals
Thanks Ryan and Benjamin, I hate living anyways.
Reader Comments
1. franklin shores - July 9, 2008 4:05 PM
first i mean fake
2. Shelby - July 9, 2008 4:14 PM
...Looks like the silver surfer to me .... or a shiny terminator... either way we need to have liquid nitrogen handy to freeze these suckers!
3. Tom Frost - July 9, 2008 4:53 PM
It'll take more than boards, dude. You gotta duct-tape all around that shit.
4. Jspot - July 9, 2008 5:04 PM
Wait TUFTS? I went to TUFTS... You can unboard your doors, I think we're safe on this one. When DARPA gets serious and awards this to someone like MIT, then I might start to worry.
Right now, at best, they'll wind up with a bean bag on wheels, with a deftly concealed kegerator inside... wait hold on thats f***ing GENIUS. Man i Love my diploma.
5. damn luddites - July 9, 2008 5:54 PM
$3.3 million dollars? to invent something that doesn't exist. that doesn't seem like enough money. maybe if some real money was invested, then they won't have to cut corners on the design, and the robots won't turn against us.
6. brooke - July 9, 2008 7:31 PM
did anyone else see this and want capri sun really badly?
7. Neo - July 9, 2008 8:17 PM
@Jspot:
Seriously. I was like... Tufts? The liberal arts school? I remember considering their engineering program back in the day. Let's just say my parents weren't amused with what they considered was a "lab"
8. Butts - July 9, 2008 8:57 PM
@5 3.3 million is nothing. 3.3 billion, maybe..
9. Butts - July 9, 2008 8:58 PM
Hell, even 3.3 billion isn't much when something like this is the goal
10. Joey - July 9, 2008 11:44 PM
Dude! Give me the 3.3 mil already! I'll work up something with Mercury and magnets that will keep them off my back for years while I'm out traveling the world and living it up on the money. Genius! LOL
11. Brian - July 10, 2008 4:20 AM
No way, I'm helping out with this (MIT is working on it too).
12. Quase - July 10, 2008 9:53 AM
Not a problem.. T1000s are pitching for directv now, so the worst that can happen is a flood of tiny antennae in our rooftops (considering you live in a condo that allows such disregard for the visual code)
13. Ethan - July 10, 2008 12:29 PM
Hey guys, I work on this project, 3.3 mil is just round 1 of funding, and no it looks nothing like a T-1000 in fact its not intimidating at all just very cool.
Surprise surprise Tufts has a decent engineering program (its the center for tissue engineering and silk development). At any rate if you think your gonna see liquid living metal anytime soon then boy do I have a few products to sell you for large amounts of cash while your at it!
a robotic infiltration robot on the other hand is another story all together.
14. Catie - July 10, 2008 7:06 PM
Any other philosophy majors just mad about the use of the phrase "a priori"? As if knowing the size of a gap beneath a window could be established with logic alone... bah... No? Noone else cares? I'll just go back to cooking french fries.
15. Amy - July 12, 2008 6:58 AM
Would someone working on this programme actually refer to a "robotic infiltration robot" - a robotic robot?
16. Alex - May 10, 2009 1:55 AM
If you have a problem with this contact barack obama.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
17. louis vuitton - September 29, 2009 5:26 AM
It'll take more than boards, dude. You gotta duct-tape all around that shit.