Simple, versatile and just four millimetres long, a new ‘soft-bodied’ robot developed at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart in Germany is capable of navigating tight and challenging terrain, both on land and in water. The small device is controlled by magnets and looks like little more than a miniature strip of gum, but it can jump, wriggle and swim through just about any small space. Its size and adaptability has its creators hopeful that it can succeed where other small robots have, thus far, mostly failed: performing tasks inside the human body. Read more about the robot in Nature.