PARIS: Engineers have created a soft, malleable 3-D “ink” to print devices that can roll, jump, even grasp objects at the wave of a magnet, they said on Wednesday.

The shape-shifting material holds promise for flexible robotics and medicine, said the researchers, mooting tiny devices that can envelop a drug, transport it through the body, and unfold to release it where needed. A team of US-based researchers made the new type of 3-D printing ink by mixing magnetic iron particles with soft, silicone rubber.

“The menagerie of structures that can be magnetically manipulated includes a smooth ring that wrinkles up, a long tube that squeezes shut, a sheet that folds itself, and a spider-like ‘grabber’ that can crawl, roll, jump, and snap together fast enough to catch a passing ball,” said the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose experts spearheaded the project.

“It can even be directed to wrap itself around a small pill and carry it across a table.” The exploit was reported in the scientific journal Nature. According to Xuanhe Zhao of MIT’s mechanical engineering department, the material can be used to manufacture magnetically-controlled biomedical devices. “For example, we could put a structure around a blood vessel to control the pumping of blood,” he said in a statement issued by the institute.