China, liquid robot inspired by Terminator

   

Li Xiangpeng, a professor of robotics at Soochow University in Suzhou, China, announced the invention of a liquid robot, inspired by Ternminator, the famous American fiction film.

An android that automatically burns itself thanks to its gelatinous nature. After six years of studies and experiments, a baby robot with similar characteristics was born. Small and reassuring, it is in the palm of one hand and is the result of a combination of elements: a plastic wheel, an even smaller lithium battery and some drops of liquid metal.

The wheel begins to turn when the center of gravity of the liquid changes. A controlled operation by altering the minivoltage of the battery. It looks like a game, in fact. But there is more, as the researchers explain in the journal Advanced Materials. "In the future we expect to develop this category of" soft "robots, incorporating liquid metal: they can be used in special missions, such as going in search and rescuing the lives of people under the rubble due to earthquakes, since they are in able to change shape to slip under a door or make space in places where humans cannot venture, ”said Tang Shiyang, a researcher at the University of Wollongong, Australia, involved in the experiments.

Tang and the rest of the team investigated the properties of liquid metal alloys, starting with electrical conductivity and then tackling the wonders of surface tension and extreme flexibility. Thus the members of the scientific team: "we believe that liquid metal helps us to develop self-reconfiguring robots". Such robots could administer drugs to strategic points in our bodies, while the less good ones have great prospects in espionage.

Category: NEWS ', EVIDENCE 1