iRobot to develop advanced flexible robot

BEDFORD, Mass., June 17 (UPI) -- iRobot Corp. has been contracted by the U.S. military to develop a new robot capable of maneuvering through limited openings for hostile threat detection.

The research and development contract is from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Army Research Office. Under the deal, Massachusetts-based iRobot will develop a soft and flexible robot for tasks within complex and cluttered environments with the ability to move through openings smaller than its actual size.

iRobot officials say they will lead a team with help from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the new Chemical Robots program. The aim is to develop a ChemBot with advanced materials, electronics, sensors and fabrication techniques for U.S. Defense Department search and rescue, and reconnaissance applications in urban environments.

"During military operations it can be important to gain covert access to denied or hostile space," Mitchell Zakin, DARPA program manager, said in a statement.

"Unmanned platforms such as mechanical robots are of limited effectiveness if the only available points of entry are small openings. We believe that a new class of soft, flexible, meso-scale mobile objects that can identify and maneuver through openings smaller than their dimensions to perform various tasks will be quite valuable in many missions."