DARPA is seeking “innovative proposals” to develop “chemical robots”. Accordind to the official solicitation, the goal is to create robots with uncommon characteristics:

“soft, flexible, mobile objects that can identify and maneuver through openings smaller than their static structural dimensions; reconstitute size, shape, and functionality after traversal; carry meaningful payloads; and perform tasks.”

Most bloggers speaking about this state that DARPA is trying to create a “Terminator 2″ kind of robot, but I guess we’ll have to wait a little bit longer for that, as the targeted bot should be about 10 cm in diameter (at least during Phase I of this research). Still, DARPA’s solicitation is quite exciting.