If you thought Wall-E was cute, wait til you see this teeny tiny robot by some of the brilliant minds at MIT and TU Munich. At ICRA 2015 in Seattle, a team consisting of Shuhei Miyashita, Steven Guitron, Marvin Ludersdorfer, Cynthis R. Sung, and Daniela Rus presented “An Untethered Miniature Origami Robot that Self-folds, Walks, Swims, and Degrades.” And the tiny bot does even more than that, lifiting twice its mass, moving through objects, and moving things around via magnet. The itty bitty bot can move at speeds of 3 and 4cm/s.
When you’re done playing with this little robot, it can self-degrade in acetone, leaving nothing but its magnet behind. The implications of this little treasure are huge and in the future, robots like these will be able to move through the human body to help it heal from various ailments. Check out all the details on this clever contraption on Spectrum.
Via: boingboing.net
