Engineers at Northwestern University have created a swarm of crab-like robots that could one day be used to perform complex tasks in small spaces. These robots are only half a millimeter wide, which might be a bit ridiculous in inches. They're made from a shape-memory alloy that

Engineers at Northwestern University have created a swarm of crab-like robots that could one day be used to perform a variety of complex tasks in small spaces.

These robots are only half a millimeter wide, which may be a bit ridiculous in inches. They're made from a shape-memory alloy that the team can "teach" the robot to perform various movements by heating them.

The tiny crab can bend, twist, crawl, walk, turn and even jump, according to a team that previously created a tiny flying robot.

Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Neurosurgery at Northwestern University said: "You can think of microrobots as agents that repair or assemble small structures or machines in industry, or as surgeries to clear blocked arteries. Assistant, stop internal bleeding or eliminate cancerous tumors - all in minimally invasive surgery"

These tiny robots are small enough to sit on the tip of a ballpoint pen and use no electronics or other complex hardware to move. Instead, the robots' bodies are "elastic," allowing them to move.

This means researchers can use lasers to quickly heat small robot limbs to bend them. Then, as the legs cool, the robot will walk around a space with each leg bending back to its original position.

The way the researchers used lasers to heat the robot determines the direction it travels and the steps it will take. This means that heating the robot from left to right will in turn cause it to move from left to right as it cools.

So you can think of the laser as a programming method that "teaches" the robot the steps the engineer wants it to take.

Currently, these tiny robots are still in the research stage, and engineers at Northwestern University have also experimented with millimeter-sized robots similar to the inchworm , the cricket and the beetle .