A miniature humanoid robot has been developed that can escape from a cage like a real Houdini: in order to pass the bars, it changes its state, from solid to liquid, and immediately afterwards reassembles and assumes its original form.
Made from magnetic material that can conduct electricity, it could even be used inside the human body in the future to administer drugs or remove objects, according to the first experiments carried out by an international team led by China’s Hong University in China Magazine Matter were published Kong.
The robot was made from a shape-shifting material made of gallium (a metal with a low melting point of 29.8 degrees) infused with magnetic particles that play a dual role.
“On the one hand – explains the mechanical engineer Caramel Majidi, from Carnegie Mellon University – make the material reactive to an alternating magnetic field, so it is possible to heat the material by induction, leading to its phase change. On the other hand, the magnetic particles give the robot the ability to move in response to the magnetic field.”
The new material also has a much more fluid liquid phase than other phase change materials.
The researchers tested it in different contexts: powered by a magnetic field, the robot could jump ditches, scale walls and even bisect itself to move other objects, and then put it back together. Impressive video that shows the mini-robot in the form of a person who liquefies to pass through the bars of a cage and then returns to its original form.
To evaluate potential applications in the biomedical field, researchers used the robot to remove foreign bodies and deliver drugs into a laboratory-replicated artificial stomach.
Instead, to demonstrate the mechanical properties of the robot, they tried to use it as a smart soldering iron to assemble and repair circuits and as a universal screw to assemble elements in tight spaces.
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