Hermit crabs are famous for being small critters ... the platform that lets the robots actively dock with a variety of shell designs. It’s an involved hack, but key to the whole enterprise.

Instead, hermit crabs have a hard exoskeleton on the front part of their bodies but a soft tail on the other half, which they protect using the discarded shells of other animals, like whelks.

In 2010, photographer Shawn Miller spotted a hermit crab using a bottle cap as a shell. Later, he found the crabs using discarded measuring cups and laundry detergent caps. He was understandably ...