Robot made of sticky tape and metal powder could crawl on your organs

Robots made from sticky tape and dust can morph into various shapes under the direction of a magnetic field. They may one day be able to crawl into computers to fix broken circuits or even inside the human stomach to apply therapeutic patches to gastric ulcers. Soft robots that have no batteries, motors or electronics and that are powered and controlled from a distance by light or magnets are a popular field of research. But there are barriers to overcome before they can be used in practical applications, including the need for a cheap manufacturing process. Zhang Li at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and his colleagues discovered that a magnet-controlled robot can be created easily and at low cost using sticky tape onto which non-sticky wax has been printed in a specific pattern.