We finally managed to create a robot that can go from solid to liquid and vice versa

Creation a robot capable of changing its physical state between solid and liquid may seem like an impossible concept to us, something confined to science fiction for all the difficulties it brings. For the avoidance of doubt and to make us understand each other at a glance we are talking about something similar to the T-1000 which we could see in the famous movie Terminator 2, an android that was able to change from a solid to a liquid state at will.

The creation of the T-1000 is not something that is within the reach of science today, and I am not sure that it ever will be, but the truth is that a group of scientists from the University of Hong Kong has made significant progress in this area. sense because they were able to develop a small robot that can change its state from solid to liquid and that it can later solidify again, as you can see in the animated picture just below these lines (it restores the solid state, but not its original form that scientists give by hand).

As we can read in the documentation related to this project, these are magneto-active robots with a transition phase and, contrary to what we may think, they are not designed to become combat weapons, but rather will have medical purposes.

I’ll give you an example, a robot of this type can be swallowed as a solid pill small size and once it entered the stomach or other target area, it would turn into a liquid to surround the foreign body and solidify again to capture and carry it out of the body once the robot is naturally expelled through the digestive system.

They could also be used for repairs of complex machines, and I’ll give you another example. Imagine a machine that has lost a screw in an area that is difficult to access. This robot could be used to reach the space where that bolt is missing, it would turn into a liquid to fill said space, and once inside it would become solid.

This robot is made of magnetic micro-particles of neodymium-iron-boron embedded in gallium, which melts at 29.8 degrees Celsius, a value close to the room temperature found in many corners of the planet between spring and summer. In its solid form, this material is it can carry objects weighing up to 30 times its own weight. To melt, you need to use magnets with their own magnetic fields, which means you don’t need an external heat source.

Undoubtedly very interesting progress that this shows science can always surprise usand that liquid metals have great potential. If you want to go deeper, you can find all the details about this project by clicking this link.