Imagine if the same forces that shrink your wool sweater when you forget what water temp to wash it at could be used at will to decide the fit of your clothes in real-time.

This is the aim of a project at MIT looking to make shape-shifting fabrics for everything from medical devices to everyday clothes to utility tools like tarps and nets.

The project has produced the prototype of a programmable, actuating fiber that's called FibeRobo. The fiber contracts in response to an increase in temperature, and then self-reverses when the temperature decreases, without any embedded sensors or other hard components.