Liquid metal morphing makes shapes for robotics

Researchers from Sussex and Swansea Universities have invented a method for morphing a liquid metal into two-dimensional shapes that can be changed seamlessly. While some way off from the morphing liquid metal robot that terrified audiences in the film Terminator 2, the technique could be useful in reconfigurable electronics, in displays and in soft robotics, the team said.

The researchers, led by Yutaka Kotuda at Swansea’s Future Interaction Technologies laboratory and Prof Sriram Subramanian of Sussex’s INTERACT laboratory, are working with an alloy of indium and gallium known as EGaIn that is a liquid at room temperature and whose surface tension is very sensitive to external electric voltages. Placing a blob of liquid metal onto a 7x7 array of graphite electrodes, they manipulated the pattern of electric charge across the array to affect the tension across the surface of the blob, pulling it around so that it formed letters and a heart shape. They discussed their research at this week’s Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces in Brighton, and it has been published in the proceedings of the conference.