Researchers at Northwestern University created a crab-shaped robot that is smaller than a flea, measuring just half a millimeter—making it the smallest-ever remote-controlled walking robot. The robot can bend, twist, crawl and leap, all without relying on complex hardware. Pointing the laser from left to right, for instance, causes the robot to move from right to left. To design the crab, scientists looked to children’s pop-up books, fabricating precursors on 2D geometries that are bonded to slightly stretched rubber substrates that cause the crab to pop into a defined form. Image courtesy of Northwestern University

Source: The Guardian July 11, 2022 19:17 UTC