6 ms·
Liquid metal brings shape-shifting robot a step closer
- anigbrowl 12y agoO.o The micro pumping and capillary action are extremely interesting, but seeing how it deforms in response to an electrical current is just eye-popping. Naturally I want to see what happens if you send AC signals rather than static DC...at the least I would expect something similar to the behavior of ferrofluids on a speaker cone, eg https://vimeo.com/65815077 https://vimeo.com/65815077 or even suspensions of cornstarch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS9LNBQE2Jw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS9LNBQE2Jw which has a handy how-to at the end. The supplementary material is available free even though the article is paywalled and is a great read. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201405438/suppinfo http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201405438/su... The alloy is described here: https://gmwgroup.harvard.edu/pubs/pdf/1014.pdf https://gmwgroup.harvard.edu/pubs/pdf/1014.pdf According to the supplemeentary, the aluminum flake 'fuel' is not consumed but breaks up into tiny fragments and eventually diffuses to the surface, causing the reaction to tail off. This seems like fairly fundamental research.