Liquid metal solves maze
- 1. Unconventional Computing Lab, UWE, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK
- 2. enter for Sustainable Future Technologies, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Livorno 60, 10144 Torino, Italy
- 3. Academic Centre for Materials and Nanotechnology, AGH University of Science and Technology, Krak\'ow, Poland
Description
These are supplementary videos for the paper ``Liquid Metal Solves Mazes'. The abstract of the paper is below.
A room temperature liquid metal is a metal whose melting point is around room temperature. We use liquid metal gallium due to its non-toxicity. A physical maze is a a connected set of Euclidean domains separated by impassable walls. We demonstrate that a maze filled with sodium hydroxide is solved by a gallium droplet when direct current is applied between start and destination loci. During the maze solving the droplet stays compact due to its large surface tension, navigate along lines of the highest electrical current due its high electrical conductivity, and goes around corners of the maze's corridors due to its high flexibility. The droplet maze solver has a long life-time due to negligible vapour of the liquid gallium.