Wired is reporting that the U.S. Navy is working on a new kind of robot that would “smell its way to weapons prep” on a ship that would work with an artificial pheromone. The challenge:
It’s not going to be that simple, though. If the project works, the sniffer-robots will begin deep below the carrier’s water-line, hauling bombs from nine levels underneath the flight deck into a series of elevators, before ending up at an assembly point on the deck called the “bomb farm.” Once there, the chemicals will have to withstand winds whipping over the deck, and “must be stable enough during direct contact with petroleum products,” withstand temperatures above 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and fade after a mere 20 minutes — thereby preventing other robot swarms with different instructions from getting confused when moving down the same hallway.
