iRobot Develops a Hyperelastic Morphing Robot

Holy Crap. Watching that thing move scared me. I don't know why, but I just envision a swarm of them inflating and deflating and rolling after me in the dark of the night...

Watching this, I couldn't help but think that this is the video that human historians will dig up in an attempt to figure out why their distant ancestors thought it wise to develop the robots that would eventually enslave the entire race...or maybe it was just the music selection?

Reminds me of the work of Japanese artist Mio I-zawa, who makes things like "mechanical tumors" that grow in size based on your CPU load:<p><a href="http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/09/mechanical-tumor-external-heart-elastic-cell/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/09/mechanical-tumor-externa...</a>

Strangely, during the development of the robot, several members of the team were plagued by persistent, unexplained nightmares. An official spokesman for iRobot attributed the nightmares to high stress and said that the affected researchers were recovering on vacation. Requests to contact the researchers were rebuffed and their current location is unknown. When approached for an interview, the project director gave only the cryptic statement, "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!"<p>No firm date has been set for commercial release of products using this technology, a spokesman giving only a figurative release date of "when the stars are right". However, he assured us, that it would "definitely be... soon."

Haha wow, I thought I'd be the only one who had flashbacks to Terminator, but I guess am not alone.