"Terminator" technology has come to life with the development of man-made material that can heal itself like human bone.

Robots in the Terminator movies have the ability to regenerate themselves even after being damaged beyond recognition. Now scientists have performed a similar feat using a self-healing "shape memory polymer" (SMP). The material can both sense when it is broken and set about repairing the damage automatically.

Just as occurs in human bone, the area around the fracture is first reinforced to prevent the damage spreading. The break - in this case a wedge-shaped crack in a piece of the material - is then closed up and healed.

US engineers at Arizona State University built the "autonomous material" from special "shape memory" plastic that can be made to recover its original form. The polymer was embedded with a fibre-optic network that both detected the damage and triggered the repair. An infrared laser shone light through the optic fibres to heat the material and start the healing process. The system was able to toughen the weakened area round the damage site 11-fold, the team led by Dr Henry Sodano told the Journal of Applied Physics.

Story taken from Yahoo News.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20101207/tsc-terminator-technology-developed-4b158bc.html