{"id":212210,"date":"2025-04-23T14:09:45","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T19:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/magnetic-metabot-can-expand-assume-new-shapes-and-move-like-a-robot-but-without-motor-or-internal-gears"},"modified":"2025-04-23T14:09:45","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T19:09:45","slug":"magnetic-metabot-can-expand-assume-new-shapes-and-move-like-a-robot-but-without-motor-or-internal-gears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/magnetic-metabot-can-expand-assume-new-shapes-and-move-like-a-robot-but-without-motor-or-internal-gears","title":{"rendered":"Magnetic \u2018metabot\u2019 can expand, assume new shapes, and move like a robot\u2014but without motor or internal gears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/magnetic-metabot-can-expand-assume-new-shapes-and-move-like-a-robot-but-without-motor-or-internal-gears2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In an experiment reminiscent of the \u201cTransformers\u201d movie franchise, engineers at Princeton University have created a type of material that can expand, assume new shapes, move and follow electromagnetic commands like a remotely controlled robot, even though it lacks any motor or internal gears.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can transform between a material and a robot, and it is controllable with an <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/external+magnetic+field\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">external magnetic field<\/a>,\u201d said researcher Glaucio Paulino, the Margareta Engman Augustine Professor of Engineering at Princeton.<\/p>\n<p>In an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-025-08851-0\" target=\"_blank\">article published<\/a> in <i><i>Nature<\/i>,<\/i> the researchers describe how they drew inspiration from the folding art of origami to create a structure that blurs the lines between robotics and materials. The invention is a metamaterial, which is a material engineered to feature new and unusual properties that depend on the material\u2019s physical structure rather than its chemical composition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an experiment reminiscent of the \u201cTransformers\u201d movie franchise, engineers at Princeton University have created a type of material that can expand, assume new shapes, move and follow electromagnetic commands like a remotely controlled robot, even though it lacks any motor or internal gears. \u201cYou can transform between a material and a robot, and it [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}