We’ve figured out the basics of a shape-shifting, T-1000-style material

The T-1000 in Terminator 2 could change shape at will, morph its hands into blades or turn parts of its body into a fluid to move through metal bars. “I saw this movie when I was a child—it was like, ‘Wow, can you imagine,’ I thought, ‘being able to do this?’” says Otger Campàs, a professor at Max Planck Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. “Now I work on embryos. And what we saw in The Terminator actually happens in an embryo. This kind of shape shifting is what an embryo does.”

Campàs and his team drew inspiration from processes called fluidization and convergent extension—mechanisms that cells in embryos use to coordinate their behavior when forming tissues and organs in a developing organism. The team built a robotic collective where each robotic unit behaved like an embryonic cell. As a collective, the robots behaved like a material that could change shape and switch between solid and liquid states, just like the T-1000.

Real-world and sci-fi alloys

The T-1000 was a marvel to behold, but the movie gave no clues as to how it worked. This is why Campàs and his colleagues looked for clues elsewhere. Similar shape-shifting properties have been observed in embryos when you watch their development sped up using time-lapse imaging. “Tissues in embryos can switch between solid and fluid states to shape the organs. We were thinking how we could engineer robots that would do the same,” Campàs says.

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