Scientists have built an amoeba-like robot with 32 individually controlled legs in a bid to find the perfect combination of stability and control. The theory for the unusual robot comes from previous experience with robot building that found a robot with more legs is often easier to control. The robot is called Mochibot and is based on a shape called a rhombic triacontahedron - a polyhedron with 32 vertices and 30 faces made of rhombuses (or rhombi). The ideal shape for an robot that can travel in any direction at any moment is a sphere. However, this shape is flawed because they rely on only a single point of contact with the floor, making the machine unstable.

Making a one-legged robot that moves is very hard. Two-legged robots are a little bit more straightforward in some ways, and four-legged robots are statically stable much of the time. You can see where this is going--there's a general trend towards more legs being more stable and potentially easier to control, especially as terrain complexity increases. So what happens if you take that logic to an extreme? As it turns out, you end up with a spherical robot made of 32 individually actuated telescoping legs, named Mochibot.