The main advantages for this sort of technology is big. These bots can get into small spaces or too dangerous spaces where humans cannot go. But like any new technology, government gets it first. These bots could be used to infiltrate homes via plumbing or heating passages and collect audio, video or just to gain a map of the layout of the structure.
"We're not going to Mars anytime soon, but a more medium-term application might be to use similar robots in flood zones to build levees out of sandbags," study lead author Dr. Justin Werfel, of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, told BBC News.
In this day and age it seems privacy of the people is up for debate in the name of public safety, we have to keep an eye on any new technology that could have spying or combat capabilities and these bots have both.
"Normally, at the beginning, you have a blueprint and a detailed plan of how to execute it, and the foreman goes out and directs his crew, supervising them as they do it," One of the developers said in a press release. "In insect colonies, it's not as if the queen is giving them all individual instructions. Each termite doesn't know what the others are doing or what the current overall state of the mound is."Imagine thousands of these robots being unleashed onto a building or town with plans to compromise structures and kill the enemy with small frag type explosives, without any oversight just pre-programmed instructions to do so. This technology will be the next battlefield tool on the ground while the unmanned drones attack from the sky. The Armed Forces are currently testing hundreds of unmanned vehicles, aircraft, submarines, ships and even robot soldiers.
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