Researchers have created a tiny robot that can fold itself into new shapes with the addition of a little heat.
The concept, still in very early stages, could become the basis of ingestible or injectable micro-bots, which would change forms as they travel to a particular site within a patient’s body to repair damaged organs or tissue. “Our goal was to make a very intelligent material that can keep redefining its functionality,” says lead researcher Shuhei Miyashita, a lecturer and electronic engineer at the Univ. of York in the U.K.
The bot consists of a simple magnetic cube called Primer, which sits in a specially designed arena (see image) and is controlled by a magnetic field. When magnetically nudged, Primer hops and shimmies toward a series of polyvinyl chloride films laminated with Mylar on each side. These films, which form the robot’s functional exoskeletons, are pre-stretched so that they fold in particular...
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