Starfish are awesome sea creatures with regenerative arms and eye spots at the end of each arm that can sense light and dark. In the robot world, their quirky design has inspired tiny starfish-shaped medical microbots that can perform colon biopsies.The microgrippers, developed by materials science and engineering professor David Gracias at John Hopkins University, can be smaller than 500 micrometers from one tip to the other—smaller than a thumb tack. The tiny arms are made with rigid magnetic nickel, and IEEE Spectrum reports that the devices “can be made of materials that respond to environmental factors such as temperature, pH, and even enzymes.

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