Until now, most advanced, small-scale robots followed a certain model: They tend to be built at the centimeter scale and have only one degree of freedom, which means they can only perform one movement. Not so with this new'bot, developed by scientists at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Boston University. It's built at the millimeter scale, and because it's made of flexible materials–easily moved by pneumatic and hydraulic power–the critter has an unprecedented 18 degrees of freedom. It's smaller and more dexterous than any of its tiny robotic peers–a significant step toward robots that will be able to perform tasks inside the human body. The engineers call the new technology MORPH, an acronym for Microfluidic Origami for Reconfigurable Pneumatic/Hydraulic. Using it to create a spider–or any other robotic critter–involves three different fabrication techniques.