In the past few years, we have covered plenty of shape changing robots. A team of researchers at Soochow University have come up with a tiny set of soft robots that can split into tinier bits to pass through small spaces and reassemble. These robots are made of a material that is loosely held together. One can move them through a maze with magnetic fields.
[Credit: Xinjian Fan et al, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abq1677] [HT]