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Shape-Shifting Liquid Robots PB Article Armored

Scientists Develop Shape-Shifting Liquid Robots That Resemble Gummy Bears and Behave Like a Living Cell

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Shape-Shifting Liquid Robots PB Article Armored
Photo credit: Jeon et al., Sci. Adv. 11, eadt5888 (2025)
A lab in Seoul had a major breakthrough with a project that produced a robot that resembles a gummy bear and behaves like a living cell. Just try dropping it from a table to see what happens – it splats and then just rolls away like it never happened. Squeeze it between your fingers and it oozes like jelly, only to snap back to its original shape when you let go. Play a burst of sound at it by sending two of them towards each other and they basically kiss, fuse and transform into one bigger blob – complete with whatever each one swallowed along the way.

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Moth-Like Flapper Drone Insect

Moth-Like Flapper Drone Flies Like an Insect, Can Navigate Autonomously Without AI

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Moth-Like Flapper Drone Insect
Photo credit: Michael Miller
At the University of Cincinnati, a small lab is humming with the faint whir of tiny fabric wings cutting through the air. Inside, a coffee cup-sized drone, called Flapper, takes to the air, its four tiny legs a whirlwind. There are no big rotating fans chomping through the battery or onboard computer frantically crunching numbers – it’s just a basic computer that flies. Researchers have spent years monitoring moths darting through gusts and floating in mid-air, and their findings will help revolutionize the way we construct anything that can fly.

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Soft Robots Steerable Robotic Skin

Researchers Build Thin Layer Of Material That Turns Ordinary Soft Robots Into Nimble Steerable Explorers

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Soft Robots Steerable Robotic Skin
Photo credit: David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
Engineers at the University of California, San Diego have managed to create a thin layer of material that turns your run of the mill soft robots into agile explorers. These vine robots can stretch and twist through spaces that would be way too small and fiddly for bigger machines, just like a snake slithering through grass.

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Why Bismuth Crystals Form Naturally

Why Bismuth Crystals Form Naturally

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Why Bismuth Crystals Form Naturally
Bismuth crystals have an otherworldly beauty, shimmering with iridescent colours that seem to dance across their stair-step surfaces when light hits them. Mistaking them for some kind of high-tech creation is easy, but they’re actually 100% natural. Their unique geometry – a real maze of spiraling edges and colors – has people wondering: what is it about these crystals, made from molten metal as they are, that gives them their otherworldly looks?

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