DARPA and nanotech liquid metal Terminators

Anyone out there heard anything more about the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's request in April for proposals to created a "chemical robot?" Any takers for the ChemBots project?

It sparked lots of discussion and comparisons to the T1000 in the Terminator movies that could morph into whatever it wanted and shapeshift between liquid and solid metal.

The Defense Department via DARPA in April suggested it wanted to develop a robot made of flexible materials that could slip through small openings -- imagine under doors -- and reconstitute itself. The military currently uses robots in ordnance detachments to disarm bombs, IEDs and otherwise, but their size and shape limits where they can go.

In its solicitation DARPA explained:

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. ChemBots represent the convergence of soft materials chemistry and robotics to create a fundamentally new class of soft meso-scale robots.

I'll ask my friend and former Post-Intelligencer colleague Andy Schneider, who has coldtruth.com up and running. In addition to investigating food safety and what we ingest, including toxins we eat and breathe, Schneider expanding his coverage into nanotechnology.