Watch How This Shapeshifting Robot Eerily Transforms To Break Out Of Prison – SlashGear

The Houdini-worthy escape in the video above is definitely attention grabbing, but its just the beginning of what you can find in the paper itself (which is packed full of additional videos). The scientists envision liquid robots flowing through tight spaces and into screw holes, where they can then solidify into a screw — no screwdriver required. One can easily imagine the implications for precision manufacturing, not to mention simplifying, say, self-assembled furniture.

If that doesn’t knock your socks off, they also have a video of two robots working together to move electronic components on a circuit board. Once they get the component into the right position, they use induction heating to solder the connections. After cooling in the ambient air, a third robot shimmies over and activates a switch, powering the component, which it turns out is a light.

Perhaps most audacious of all is a video demonstrating how, if one were brave enough, you could swallow one of these robots. Once comfortably in your GI tract, it could latch onto a foreign object and guide it out of your body. Look, if that makes you uncomfortable, maybe don’t go around swallowing things that aren’t food in the first place.

By changing the gallium matrix to one of several different alloys, the melting point can be customized for different applications, making it a highly versatile technology. These scientists may not be working for Skynet from “Terminator 2”, but it sure feels like their lab is firmly planted in the world of tomorrow.