The Register's Lewis Page reports that DARPA, the United States' Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has announced plans to develop what it calls LANdroids, tiny crawling robots with wireless functionality.

"The idea is that the diminutive, cheap, expendable droids would be scattered about by US troops on foot," Page writes. "They would then link up to form a wireless voice/data network which could penetrate into every corner of tricky urban non-line-of-sight environments. The net would use multiple pathways for resilience, and would be able to heal itself in the event of individual droids going down."

DARPA says the aim is to keep the price per LANdroid around $100.

More here from Government Executive, and more info from DARPA here (PDF).