It’s not exactly the T-1000—yet. But researchers in China and the United States have created a liquid metal robot that can mimic the shape-shifting abilities of actor Robert Patrick’s silvery, morphing killer robot in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Researchers demonstrated the capabilities of the new human-shaped, 10-millimeter-tall “robot” by having it slip through the bars of a mocked-up jail cell (as seen above). The machine is made of magnetic, microscopic particles inside a sheath of gallium, a soft metal with a low melting temperature. When exposed to an alternating magnetic field, the particles heat up and melt the gallium. The magnetic field is then used to steer the liquid metal, which can pass through would-be prison bars with ease. When cooled inside a mold, the gallium reforms its original personlike shape, the authors report today in Matter.

Similar shape-shifting robots, the authors argue, could one day be used to deliver drugs to specific organs, grab and cart away foreign objects inside the body, or assemble tiny mechanical parts in hard-to-reach spaces. That is, of course, if Skynet doesn’t send them back in time to prevent their invention in the first place.