At 0.25 cubic inch and weighing less than 1 ounce, it is the smallest untethered robot ever created. Powered by three watch batteries, it rides on track wheels and consists of an 8-kilobyte ROM processor, a temperature sensor and two motors that drive the wheels. Enhancements being considered include a miniature camera, microphone, communication device and chemical microsensor.
"This could be the robot of the future," says Ed Heller, one of the project's researchers. "It may eventually be capable of performing difficult tasks that are done with much larger robots today, such as locating and disabling land mines or detecting chemical and biological weapons."