First Liquid Machines Presage Soft Robots 42
KentuckyFC writes "The technology behind the T-1000 assassin in the Terminator movies might as well be science fiction as far as modern manufacturing is concerned. But we're making progress — thanks to some work by Chinese engineers who have perfected a way to make liquid metals assume various shapes and switch from one to another with the flick of a switch. These guys placed a thin film of gallium-indium-selenium alloy (melting point 10.5 degrees C) in water and applied an electric field. The balance between the surface tension of the metal and the electric forces on its surface then caused the metal to form a ball. They can move the sphere around, combine it with other spheres, and even use it to rotate the water. The engineers say this is the first step toward smart liquid machines that can assume almost any shape. And since the alloy is biologically benign, these machines could be used with, and even inside humans. Their next goal is to create a set of parallel electrodes that cause the metal to form into an undulating worm-shape that can propel itself along."
Re:How about that (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't get to the link and know no more about this metal except from the summary, but it sounds like it would be solid below 10.5 C - Not that cold. With sufficient sophistication (i.e. FAR beyond turning into a ball), you could imagine some solid "cool" pieces with "warm" joints.
But then again, with "sufficient sophistication," 3-d scanners/printers and electron microscopes could give us teleportation and/or human duplication capabilities. Yep, sci-fi and suspension of disbelief. But the idea that we might be so advanced that we could build pneumatic tubes as a means of trans-Atlantic message passing seemed impossibly advanced 150 years ago. And we beat the hell out of that one.
[Yeah, I realize I just posted 3 "buts," all of them big. Well, I like big "buts" and I cannot lie.]