Untethered and wirelessly-controlled micro-robots have been catching substantial attention for a long time due to their great potentials in bioengineering and industrial microoperation. 

Compare with ordinary rigid-body robots, soft magnetically controlled micro-robots promises a new degree in biomedical application, especially in the narrow environment containing viscous resistance and friction fluid. 

Inspired by the intelligent creatures in the nature, Dr. XU Tiantian from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences designed a novel millimeter-level magnetically driven software micro-robot, named Cruciform Thin-film Microrobot (CTM), which could realized double-modal motion and environmental adaptive functions through a programmable external magnetic field. 

The CTMs with the weight of 0.455 g, has 2 main motion modes: jellyfish-like mode and forklift truck mode.  

The first mode was similar to the motion of a jet jellyfish, by controlling the expansion and contraction of the entire shape, the vortex rings fell off the tail of the edge and the fluid moved backward, so that the "jellyfish" gained forward velocity. 

The second mode has the ability to transport the micro-objects, the load capacity experiments showed that CTM could lift the object ten times heavier than itself. 

Due to its soft and flexible body structure, the CTMs has great application prospects in micro-assembly, minimally invasive diagnosis, targeted drug delivery.  

The study published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.