It Is Claimed To Be,

the smallest remote-controlled walking robot ever made,

the robot crab is smaller than a flea and capable of movements including walking, turning and jumping, its inventors from the USA's Northwestern University say it gives a glimpse into the future of robotics, when microscale devices could be used to perform tasks in tight spaces, including the human body,

"You might imagine micro-robots as agents to repair or assemble small structures or machines in industry or as surgical assistants to clear clogged arteries, to stop internal bleeding or to eliminate cancerous tumors — all in minimally invasive procedures," said engineer John A Rogers, who led the project, the robot's tiny size is made possible because it has no complex hardware, hydraulics or electrical circuits, instead, it is made of a metal alloy known as a "shape-memory alloy", which means it changes shape when heated and then returns to the previous shape as it cools,

to create the crabs, the researchers initially cut them from a flat sheet. They then cover these shapes with a stretched rubber substrate, which causes them to buckle into their intended three-dimensional form as the rubber relaxes,

a thin glass coating ensures that as that body part cools, it will once again spring back to the bent shape. According to Rogers, the robot's tiny size is an advantage when it comes to the rate of cooling, "In fact, reducing the sizes of these robots allows them to run faster," said Rogers,

the heating process, which the researchers call "laser-induced local thermal actuation" in a paper published in Science Robots, is quite precise and produces a range of movement, I am looking at a tape measure with millimeter calibrations on one side, and I am trying to imagine this robot crab at just a half a millimeter, amazing!