The shape-shifting liquid-metal robot "T1000" in the film "Terminator" opens the door to the application of liquid metal in the field of robotics.

It was learned from the University of Science and Technology of China that the research team organized by Zhang Shiwu, associate professor of the Department of Precision Machinery and Instruments, designed a new type of robot driver based on Gallium-based room-temperature liquid metals, which helped realize wheeled mobile robot driven by liquid metals for the first time.

Robot made of liquid metals in fictional movies [Photo/ xinhuanet.com]

The research results have been published on the Journal of Advanced Materials, the top weekly journal in the materials sciences.

Gallium-based room-temperature liquid metal possesses unique surface properties as well as physical and chemical properties, meaning that it can be deformed, moved, separated and fused by various energy fields such as electric field, magnetic field and concentration gradient field or surface modification. Therefore, this research has great application prospects in the fields of microfluidics, biomedicine and robotics.

However, the application of liquid metals in the field of robotics is limited to the use of liquid metal droplets as the robot body, and there are no research reports on functional robots based on liquid metals.

The researchers designed an ultra light semi-closed wheel structure with a super-hydrophobic surface to confine the liquid metal droplets inside the narrow wheel body.

They applied an external electric field to move the liquid metals in the wheel through a cleverly designed follow-up micro-electrode holder. With the center of gravity of the wheeled robot being continuously changed, the wheeled robot is driven to roll.

At the same time, the researchers made dynamic modeling and analysis of the new liquid-metal robots, and explored the effects of electrolyte concentration, applied voltage, liquid metal volume, wheel structure and other parameters on the kinematic performance of the robot, to obtain the best parameter matching for driving motion.

In the end, through the integrated battery system, the researchers successfully designed a new liquid-metal self-driving wheeled mobile robot.