Researchers have developed an appointment capable of liquefying. Such an ability would make it particularly useful in medicine.
Chinese and American scientists have designed a small robot endowed with the impressive ability to change shape, more precisely to change from solid to liquid state and vice versa. A feat which, beyond recalling Terminator 2, is a first. According to Chengfeng Pan, an engineer at the University of Hong Kong and director of this study, “giving robots the ability to go from a liquid state to a solid state gives them more functionality”.
Researchers have developed a rendezvous capable of liquefying
Here, unlike Terminator 2, there is no question of a weapon. This “magnetoactive solid liquid phase transition machine” can “simply” switch between states, a unique ability that might make this robot very useful in the medical field. In a video shared by the researchers, they highlight several possible applications of this technology. In particular, it would be possible to distribute a drug or extract a foreign body from an organ by modifying its state.
And even better, thanks to its conductive properties, the robot can assemble and repair electrical circuits, making it capable of “acting as a mobile electrical welder for very hard-to-reach areas”. A property possible thanks to the magnetic particles incorporated in the gallium which makes up the robot. “The magnetic particles have two roles here. […] The first is that they make the material sensitive to an alternating magnetic field, so you can inductively heat the material and cause the phase change. But magnetic particles also give robots mobility and the ability to move in response to the magnetic field,” says lead study author and mechanical engineer Carmel Majidi, of Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania.
Such an ability would make it particularly useful in medicine.
In a second video, the solid-state robot escapes from a dummy prison by going into a liquid state before returning to its solid state. Really amazing. Especially since, as the authors explain, if the change of state has already been studied, it is the first time that it is so effective. This is largely due to gallium, which makes it possible to achieve a real liquid state quite easily.
We might therefore quite easily consider such robots “in a biomedical context, specifies Carmel Majidi. Much further study will be needed to estimate how this might actually be used for drug delivery or foreign body removal.”
