Katharina Buczek
The team noticed that these echinoderms were able to switch between “soft” and “stiff” physical states in order to protect themselves and increase the amount of weight they could transport.
Now, the resulting robot is just three millimeters tall and one millimeter wide. However, much like a sea cucumber, the robot was found to be able to carry an object thirty times greater than its own mass while in solid form.
Then, to switch the robot to a liquified state, the researchers simply placed the robot near magnets.
Afterward, the magnets activated magnetic induction– which caused the robot’s magnets to vibrate, heat up, and form electric currents. Finally, this ultimately shifted the metal around the magnets while reaching its melting point.
And with the help of a magnetic field, the researchers found that the robot was able to climb walls, jump over moats, and split in half in order to cooperatively move other objects at once before coming back together.
Another impressive video showed the robot locked behind a grid with jail-like bars. It was able to easily escape, though, by liquefying, oozing through the grid, and remolding back into solid form on the outside.
Now, Pan detailed how he and his team are “pushing this material system in more practical ways” to help solve specific engineering and medical problems.
For instance, for biomedicine, the team was able to use the robots to remove a foreign object from a stomach model. Then, the robots delivered drugs on-demand to the same model stomach.
In terms of engineering, the team also demonstrated that the robot was able to work as a universal mechanical “screw” used for assembling parts in tough-to-reach spaces.
This was accomplished by the robot actually melting into the screw socket and solidifying on command.
No screws or actual “screwing” was even required.
