The robots are coming. They’re coming to drive your car, they’re coming for your job, and they’re coming for your heart. Like, you may literally have a robotic heart one day.

That is, if a peculiar new device is any indication. Researchers have developed a robotic sleeve that fits over the heart (well, a pig’s heart at the moment) and pumps like the organ would itself. The idea is that if a patient is going into cardiac arrest, the best way to help the heart is to be the heart. One day that may mean patients with cardiac problems could get their own robotic heart to kick in if their ticker starts to give way.

This is the vanguard of a new breed of robots that not only get along with humans (when was the last time you had a pleasant experience with a crushingly powerful industrial robotic arm?), but interact safely with their flesh. And it’s forcing humanity to reconsider what a robot even is in the first place—because more and more, the robots will become a part of us.

So, the heart robot. Its “muscles” are made of silicone, compressing and twisting thanks to a series of actuators powered with air. In the lab, the researchers chemically induced cardiac arrest in pigs wearing the device, then monitored the electrical output of their heartbeats. "In the study, we ended up using a pacemaker to override the electrical activity of the heart, and pace it so we were controlling the rate at which the heart beat," says lead author Ellen Roche, a biomedical engineer at the National University of Ireland, Galway. "Then, with that same signal, we were controlling our device." Working with the heart, the robot increased blood flow through the aorta by 50 percent.

Doctors already use implantable pumps called ventricular assist devices to help ferry blood out of a weakened heart to the rest of the body. “But because the blood then is in contact with foreign materials and moving parts, it can risk clotting,” says Roche. That means patients have to take blood thinners, whose side effects include uncontrollable bleeding—not ideal.

What Roche’s robot does is supplement the heart, not replace it. And because it’s made of a pliable material—making it what’s known as a soft robot—it’s less irritating to flesh.

Expect to find these kinds in your body at some point, because humanity is in a great robotic transition. New soft robots made from silicone or rubber do away with the clunkiness and are more, well, squishy and inviting. Plus, they're generally cheaper to make. “A lot of people are scared about robots,” says roboticist Pietro Valdastri of Leeds University. “They still think about the Terminator. Those are mainly the robots of the past, now the field is evolving toward collaborative and safe robots, that's for sure.” They're great big softies, really.

So think robotic factory arms that can sense humans around them, as opposed to just crushing intruders. But also robots that heal us from the inside. “A conventional robot is rigid joints and programmable kinds of motions—it's metallic hinges,” says Roche. “But more recently the whole field of soft robotics has been growing a lot, and more the way I think of a robot is something that can design a task and be completely under user control or be preprogrammed to complete a task.” That means that a robot doesn’t always need to have legs or wheels. Sometimes it’s just a sleeping bag wrapped around a heart.

The FDA, then, is about to see a flood of robotic medical devices (Roche plans to take her robotic heart to human trials after more extensive animal trials). But whether an implantable device qualifies as a “robot” isn’t really of the agency’s concern. “The device’s intended use and indications for use, not necessarily whether it is implanted, determines its regulatory pathway,” says FDA spokesperson Stephanie Caccomo. Each device is judged on its own merits, not whether it happens to be a robot.

Still, get ready for robots in your body. But don’t worry, they’re soft and darn near cuddly—for your heart, at least.