Scientists create shape-shifting Terminator robots that may change from liquid to stable

Just like the terrifying T-1000 robot from Terminator 2: Judgement Day, scientists have created shape-shifting robots which can seamlessly move from liquid to solid

Move over robot fingers – boffins have invented a real shape-shifting Terminator that can transform from liquid to solid.

Film-goers were terrified when the robot T-1000 – played by actor Robert Patrick – switched from metal to fluid to squeeze past obstacles in 1991 film Terminator 2: Judgement Day. And new fears exist as AI bots take over human jobs.

And now researchers have made the movie monster a reality by creating robots that could be poured from a bottle. Individual disk-shaped autonomous robots that look like small hockey pucks can be programmed to assemble themselves together into various forms with different material strengths.

The bots use magnets, motors and light to transform between rigid and fluid states as self-healing shape-shifters.

Matthew Devlin, a former doctoral researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara US, said: “We’ve figured out a way for robots to behave more like a material.

“You can just tell them all at once under a constant light field which direction you want them to go and they can all line up and do whatever they need to do.”

One of the biggest challenges the boffins faced was creating a material that could be stiff and strong yet also able to flow into new configurations. For inspiration they looked at how embryos form in nature.

As embryos develop, cells arrange themselves around each other to turn the organism from a blob into a collection of forms – like hands and feet – of various consistencies such as bones and brain.

Otger Campàs, director of the Physics of Life department at the Dresden University of Technology in Germany, said: “Living embryonic tissues are the ultimate smart materials. They have the ability to self-shape, self-heal and even control their material strength in space and time.”

His lab discovered embryos can temporarily soften – almost like melting glass – to sculpt their final forms.

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“To sculpt an embryo, cells in tissues can switch between fluid and solid states; a phenomenon known as rigidity transitions in physics,” he added.

The robot researchers used magnets and motorised gears to bind the tiny bots together as a solid. By modifying the gears the robots reshaped into malleable materials.

Shining light on sensors on the top of each robot told them in which direction to spin their gears and thus how to switch shape.

The boffins created robots that could support heavy loads but also reshape, manipulate objects and even self-heal.

Current prototypes are directed by humans but if they were powered by AI, they could control themselves.

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