Slime RobotsMagnetic slime robots are in the market to give new sight to personal automation in April.

If you have accidentally eaten an iron object, these magnetic slime robots can easily get it out for you and you can avoid operations. Personal automation has become extremely easy with this new type of robot. 

Scientists at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have created magnetic slime robots. It can carry out tasks like fixing broken circuits and picking up objects. They also think one day it could be put inside the human body to do things like help find items that have been swallowed by accident. The team also tested how well the soft-bodied robot functions in a range of situations, including finding and surrounding a lost battery in a model stomach and moving along while holding onto a piece of wire, and also getting through tiny gaps.

The dark-colored magnetic blob has been compared on social media to Flubber, the eponymous substance in the 1997 sci-fi film, and described as a “magnetic turd” and “amazing and a tiny bit terrifying”. Prof Li Zhang, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who co-created the slime, emphasized that the substance was real scientific research and not an April fool’s joke, despite the timing of its release. The slime contains magnetic particles so that it can be manipulated to travel, rotate, or form O and C shapes when external magnets are applied to it. The blob was described in a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Functional Materials as “magnetic slime robots”. “The ultimate goal is to deploy it like a robot,” Zhang said to The Guardian, adding that for the time being the slime lacked autonomy. “We still consider it as fundamental research – trying to understand its material properties.”

This particular robot is breaking ground in the field of personal automation as healthcare employees can use it in an extensive manner. Its magnetic particles would make it easy to handle by users for different purposes.