You may think that when and if the robot apocalypse happens, we’ll be able to lock the robots up to keep humanity safe. Well, think again. A team of researchers from the Soft Machines Lab at Carnegie Mellon University have created a rudimentary robot that can become a liquid on demand, a capability the lead author compared to the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
Most of the robots you’ve seen are of the “hard” variety. They’re made of solid metal, with unyielding graspers and ranges of motion dictated by the type and orientation of linear actuators. Soft robotics is an emerging field of study that seeks to build robots that are more flexible, allowing them to handle objects and navigate complex environments without the same risk of damage — to the robot as well as anyone or anything that might be nearby.
The liquid metal robot created at Carnegie Mellon, with assistance from Sun Yat-sen University and Zhejiang University, is based on gallium with embedded magnetic nanoparticles. Since Gallium has an unusually low melting point of just 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29 degrees Celsius), it’s possible to shift it between liquid and metal without any special equipment. The team calls this “magnetoactive phase transitional matter” or MPTM.
We’ve seen several soft robotics projects that use magnets for external control. But the MPTM work at Carnegie Mellon adds morphological adaptability to the equation. The magnetic nanoparticles allow the researchers to move the robots around and even generate enough heat to melt them on the spot. “When you have a metal that’s in the presence of an alternating magnetic field, we just know from fundamental principles of electromagnetism that causes basically electrical current to spontaneously flow through that metal,” lead author Carmel Majidi tells Vice.
The video above demonstrates how the tiny gallium figure is able to liquefy and squirm through the bars of its cage, just like that famous scene from Terminator 2 when the T-1000 walks through the bars. There’s one important caveat, though. While it looks like the robot returns to its original shape on its own, it had to be remolded by hand for that shot. There is currently no mechanism to control the shape of the robot with that much precision as it returns to its solid state. Maybe one day, though. The researchers see numerous potential applications for a meltable magnetic robot, including biomedicine, where it could deliver drugs or remove foreign objects from the body.
Now read:
- Harvard Scientists Invent Gripping Robot With Soft, Inflatable Tentacles
- MIT Is Working on Self-Assembling Robots
- Boston Dynamics Atlas Robot Gets Hands to Grab and Throw
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