Researchers demonstrated one of the machines turning into ooze to escape the bars of a cage, not unlike the T-1000 in the 1991 classic.

This isn't a step toward creating a perfect killing machine, of course. A paper published in scientific journal Matter reveals that these magnetoactive phase transitional matter (MPTM) robots are designed for much more practical, non-sinister uses, such as entering a stomach as a small solid block, liquifying around a solid foreign object, reforming to capture it, then exiting the body.