This robot can melt and rebuilt its legs to change how it works

If you thought the self-healing cyborg from The Terminator was just sci-fi, think again. A new four-legged multimodal robot created by researcher Jianguo Zhao at Colorado State University comes with “shape-morphing joints” that Spectrum says can be selectively melted and solidified to optimize its legs for different motions.

According to the report, the legs are melted by applying heat to a wire that's wrapped around the joints. It takes about 10 seconds for them to soften. Once it does, the robot can switch between a number of different leg positions, enabling it to climb over or pass underneath various obstacles, as seen in the video below.