Magnetic robots walk, crawl, and swim

MIT scientists have developed tiny, soft-bodied robots that can be controlled with a weak magnet. The robots, formed from rubbery magnetic spirals, can be programmed to walk, crawl, swim -- all in response to a simple, easy-to-apply magnetic field. "This is the first time this has been done, to be able to control three-dimensional locomotion of robots with a one-dimensional magnetic field," says Professor Polina Anikeeva, whose team published an open-access paper on the magnetic robots in the journal Advanced Materials. "And because they are predominantly composed of polymer and polymers are soft, you don't need a very large magnetic field to activate them. It's actually a really tiny magnetic field that drives these robots," adds Anikeeva, who is a professor of materials science and engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, a McGovern Institute for Brain Research associate investigator, as well as the associate director of MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics and director of MIT's K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center.