Researchers have developed a small robot that can work together as an assemblage that changes shape and alters solids and “fluid-like” states. This is a familiar concept for those who are still troubled by nightmares about the T-1000 robot assassin in Terminator 2.
A team led by UC Santa Barbara, Matthew Devlin, described the work in a recently published paper in Science, writing that “the vision of a cohesive group of robotic units with physical properties that can be arranged in virtually any form has long been an interest in both science and fiction.”
Otger Campàs, a professor at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, told Ars Technica that the team was inspired by embryonic tissue and tried to try a robot with similar capabilities. These robots have electric gears as they remain equipped with photo sectors that allow polarizing filters to receive instructions from the flashlight so that they can move around within the collective magnets.
Campàs said reality remains “a long way from that of the Terminator” and the challenges of size and power remain. The researcher’s robot was just over 5 centimeters in diameter, but the goal was to make it one or two centimeters or even smaller.