Think about a place where humans cannot easily go but a crab-walker made of paper and polystyrene can go easily. Scientist has been working lately on making such kind of robots to reach the places where humans never imagined reaching.

At first sight, it looks like a child’s science fair project: a flat, plastic cutout with batteries in the middle. Then it shudders to life. A few joints bend. The midsection rises with a startling jolt. Moments later, it scuttles away.

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This crab-walker — which self-assembles from about $20 worth of parts and walks without human direction — marks an advance in inexpensive and versatile robotics that could ultimately be created for pennies, stacked like a deck of cards and deployed in spaces and applications where no robot has gone before.

Researchers at Harvard and MIT created a robot and their work was published in Science in August.  This robot is made of paper and 3-D sheets of polystyrene from the children’s art toy Shrinky Dinks. To allow the robot to fold like a piece of origami or unfold like a flower petal embedded wires were used. This embedded wires heat and shrink the material in certain places.