Liquid robot can split into tiny droplets and reform into a blob

Karmela Padavic- Callaghan is a writer.

When it encounters obstacles or narrow passages, a soft robot made from droplets of a magnetic fluid can break itself up. It could be used to deliver drugs in the future.

The magnetic iron oxide particles suspended in oil were used to make a soft robot that was about a centimetre in diameter. A set of controllable magnets can be used to control the robot.

The researchers used their magnets to squeeze the robot into a small shape. Magnetic fields were used to create a group of smaller, millimetre or micrometre-sized robots. The magnetic field directed the parts to come together.

A patient could swallow a drug-carrying robot that could then split inside of them, so that each tiny robotic droplet could deliver medicine to them. According to Bradley Nelson at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, there is a possibility of using a robot to remove blood clot in the brain that causes strokes.

Hamidreza Marvi at Arizona State University says that using the new robot in medicine is very unlikely in the future. It could be used in lab-on-a-chip devices where chemical processes are carried out in a small space.

Science Advances was published in the journal.