It's official: The U.S. military is getting into the business of building Transformer-style robots. Of course, they won't exactly be like the ones you've seen in Michael Bay's films, but in terms of purpose and functionality, the early versions won't be far off.
DARPA, or the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, revealed on Tuesday concept images of its plan to outfit the U.S. military with modular flying drones, which can "transform" to meet various mission needs.
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Called ARES (Aerial Reconfigurable Embedded System), the drone will serve as an unmanned flying vehicle capable of setting troops down in hazardous environments, and as a resupply vehicle for military deployments. ARES will also be able to facilitate the evacuation of injured soldiers, a key feature for missions unassisted by combat-ready helicopters.
Images previewing the final version of ARES show a kind of flying drone that can be attached to various modules, including vehicles and specially designed containers.
Developed from a project called (perhaps not so coincidentally) "Transformer (TX)," its original goal was to create "a ground vehicle that is capable of configuring into a VTOL [vertical take-off and landing] air vehicle that provides sufficient flight performance and range, while carrying a payload that is representative of four (4) troops with gear."

Image: DARPA

“ARES would make organic and versatile VTOL capability available to many more individual units," Ashish Bagai, DARPA program manager, said in a statement. "Our goal is to provide flexible, terrain-independent transportation that avoids ground-based threats, in turn supporting expedited, cost-effective operations and improving the likelihood of mission success."
With systems integration and design support being handled by Lockheed Martin Skunkworks, ARES is currently in its third and final stage.
For those keeping score on our impending robot-controlled future, DARPA is also the agency behind next-gen robotics efforts such as the all-terrain Big Dog robot and the Atlas humanoid robot.
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