T7he “magnetoactive phase transitional matter (MPTM)” robot was developed to combine the rigidity and structural strength of conventional robots with their flexibility. (Consider how the liquid metal T-1000 from “Terminator 2” could form swords out of its limbs and phase through walls.)
An engineer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who led the groundbreaking study, “giving robots the ability to switch between liquid and solid states endows them with more functionality.”
According to senior author and mechanical engineer Carmel Majidi of Carnegie Mellon University, the sea cucumber, a marine invertebrate that “can very rapidly and reversibly change their stiffness,” served as the inspiration for MPTM.
The challenge, he said, is to replicate that in the soft materials systems.