It sounds like the ultimate in job-destroying automation: these robots can turn into walkers, swimmers, or gliders, and they are self-assembling. No human hands required for these monsters to go from the road to the air! Only a few small hurdles remain before these bad boys are carrying cargo (or ninjas) across land and sea.

MIT computer scientist Daniela Rus and her team have created a fascinating prototype robot known as Primer that starts out as a little cube controlled by magnetic fields. As you can see in the illustration above, Primer can’t move unless a person controls it with magnetic fields beneath the platform. In the video, you can watch it change shape when it bounces onto a special platform. (Note that the video is often speeded up—Primer isn’t lightning fast.) There, a thin piece of heat-activated metal folds up around it, creating what Rus calls an origami exoskeleton.