This Is the Tiniest Little Quadruped Robot We've Ever Seen

The fact that most insects (except for the really freaky ones) are very small doesn't stop them from getting everywhere they want to, especially all of those places that you try to keep them out of. Roboticists have been experimenting with bug-sized robots, but they're still pretty large, about the size of giant beetles or moths. Most insects are far smaller than that, which means that they experience the world much differently, and that can be a hard thing to study effectively. At ICRA last month, Ryan St. Pierre and Professor Sarah Bergbreiter from the University of Maryland presented a paper on the gait characteristics of magnetically actuated legged robots weighing less than 2 grams, which was very cool to see. It's only the beginning, though: robots like these are about to get way, way smaller.