In news that makes you wonder if anyone from the US Department of Energy has watched the Terminator films, physicists at the Argonne National Laboratory have successfully created self-assembling micro-robots that are just 0.5mm (500 micron) in diameter.

Formed out of minuscule ferromagnetic particles that float freely in a sandwich of water and oil, these micro-robots (microbots? nanobots?) are controlled with magnets. With the application of an alternating magnetic field that’s perpendicular to the immiscible mixture, the micro-particles assemble into spiked circles called asters, after the aster flower. Then, with a magnetic field that is parallel to the surface, the movements of these microbots can be controlled.

The main significance of this discovery is the remarkable accuracy and delicacy that these magnetic controls can provide. If you watch the videos embedded below, you can see these micro-robots being used to ferry tiny objects around, either by “cupping” the object or by forming a box of “bouncers” that move in unison to shuttle the object around. In the first video a 3mm glass bead is being carried; in the second video, particles as small as 0.15mm (150 micron) are enclosed and transported.

In the short term, these micro-robots could be used to deliver cancer drugs (or any kind of medication) in a highly-targeted fashion, rather than the carpet bombing approach that is currently used — but in the long term, they could be used to make things. That is the ultimate goal of nano- and micro-robotics, after all: self-assembling robots that can assume the perfect form for a task, and then dissolve into nothingness or take on another form. Even with these nascent, crude asters, you could still create a computer program that repeatedly walked a bunch of micro-robots through the same actions.

It is not a huge logical leap, in other words, to imagine a huge vat of micro-robots that are tasked with creating silicon chips or plastic cups — or just about anything, really.

Now, it’s important to remember that self-assembling doesn’t imply self-awareness or the ability to operate independently — but yes, if we do one day have production lines that entirely staffed by self-assembling nanobots, it does mean that a computer could theoretically take charge and begin building more computers like itself…

Read more at Argonne National Laboratory