Chinese researchers have developed a small, untethered marine robot capable of swimming, crawling, and gliding in the ocean’s deepest parts.

The centimeter-scale robot, weighing just 16 grams, uses shape-memory springs to switch between movement modes.

Successfully tested at depths of 1,384 meters in the Haima Cold Seep and 10,666 meters in the Mariana Trench, it offers improved agility over traditional deep-sea robots.

The team also created a soft gripper for retrieving deep-sea creatures, Tech Xplore has reported.

The research was published in Science Robotics.

Written by B.C. Begley