Jul 9 2008 Great, 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.

Mar 19 2008 Bat-Like Spy Plane Not Endorsed By Batman

The Army has awarded the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan $10 million dollars to develop this bat-inspired spy plane. The flying mammal plane would "gather data from sights, sounds and smells in urban combat zones and transmit information back to a soldier in real time." Among the top developmental priorities are microelectronics for the 6" spy plane.

They will develop sensors, communication tools and batteries for this micro-aerial vehicle that's been dubbed "the bat." Engineers envision tiny cameras for stereo vision, an array of mini microphones that could home in on sounds from different directions, and small detectors for nuclear radiation and poisonous gases. Low-power miniaturized radar and a very sensitive navigation system would help the bat find its way at night. Energy scavenging from solar, wind, vibration and other sources would recharge the bat's lithium battery. The aircraft would use radio to send signals back to troops.

Awesome, I hope it actually happens. Otherwise that's a lot of money down the drain for a work bench covered with scrap metal and electronic parts. Say, does anybody know how I can score one of these $10 million Army grants? I've got a great idea for urban combat reconnaissance missions. It's called me in a trenchcoat with a spy camera bow-tie.

A closeup render of the bat's head area after the jump.

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