Chembot is, however, far from the first shape-shifting robot.

Here are four robots that show similar metamorphic skill.

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TET Rover, NASA

NASA has also been working its own shape-changing robots for a while. Instead of a soft, deformable material though, NASA's "TET" rover, shown in the animation above, changes shape by adjusting trusses that extend or retract. This would let the robot tumble across terrain and squeeze through tight crevasses on other planets.

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Superbot, University of Southern California

Another shape-shifter is the University of Southern California's SuperBot. This one changes shape using several modular units which connect together like Legos. This allows it to adopt different motions, including walking, crawling or rolling.

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Here is a similar reconfigurable robot developed by Mark Yim from the University of Pennsylvania's (a 1999 TR35 winner). Yim's reconfigurable robots are inspired by snakes and lizards and this one can even reassemble itself when kicked apart. This trait could be especially useful for robots working in isolated places.

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Atron, Maersk Institute

The Maersk Institute in Denmark has made self-containing modules that can connect, communicate, and share power to make a long, winding robot, dubbed ATRON. See ATRON modules learning to work together and develop modes of locomotion below.

iRobot, the company that makes military robots as well as the Roomba vacuuming bot, announced last Friday that it will receive funding for several endeavors from the Robotics Technology Consortium (RTC).

One project will see the company develop controllers that give remote robot operators sensory feedback. The US military currently uses iRobot's wheeled PackBot in Iraq and Afghanistan for tasks such as bomb disposal, detecting hazardous materials and carrying equipment.

The company says that adding force sensing to a PackBot arm could give operators the ability to "feel" the weight of an object or whether it is hard or soft, via the robot's arms.

iRobot plans to use an enhanced version of the Novint Falcon haptic controller--a device designed for computer games that provides a remote sense of touch to the user.

According to the president of iRobot's Government and Industrial Robots division Joe Dyer:

"[This] would greatly improve warfighters' ability to examine and manipulate improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and reduce their time on task, ultimately keeping them safer,"

The RTC funds will also go toward developing better sniper detection and a sensing robotic head for the UGVs.

We finally have a hint of what The Droid Works, a stealthy-mode start-up founded by Helen Grenier, one of the cofounders of iRobot, will develop.

The NSF has given The Droid Works a grant worth nearly $100,000 to develop indoor and outdoor unmanned air vehicles. According to the report, the UAVs will be used for emergency response:

Indoor applications would enable the UAVs to respond to emergency situations that involve large steps, closed doors and rough terrain. The NSF grant will be used to develop indoor flight control and safety technology for the UAVs.

Other researchers are developing UAVs and other robots to assist with a rescue or survey an area following a disaster. Robin Murphy, a professor of computer science at Texas A&M University, is leading one effort to use snake-like robots to rescue people trapped beneath rubble. More recently she developed a way to use multiply UAVs to survey an area and locate survivors.