iRobot, the maker of the Roomba vacuum for home use and the Packbot for military use is now showing off a brand-new robot: The Chembot.

This robot can shrink and expand according to what is needed for it to get around. If it needs to fit through a small hole, it can just shrink down, get through the hole and then expand again so that it has faster and better range of motion. Looking at this video, it appears that they are not quite to the stage where it moves freely while shrunk, but it can shrink and expand and then move. This is very, very impressive. This is also intended for military application. Though perhaps in the future, a robot like this could be used to get into hard-to-reach places to do repairs around our homes. Check it out in the video below – the action starts at about the 1:50 mark.

(via IEEE Spectrum)