It’s about half an inch long, a few millimeters wide and no thicker than a human hair, and it usually just sits there like a discarded strip of red cellophane — until a specific shade of green laser light strikes it.

Then the University of Warsaw’s new robot caterpillar shows what it can do.

It can move across a surface by itself, scrunching into a series of undulating shapes that run down its length in wavelike spasms. And it can even carry 10 times its weight while in motion.

“The idea is just starting in science that robots can be something without wires and batteries and motors,” said Mikolaj Rogoz, a researcher in the Photonic Nanostructure Facility at the university’s Institute of Experimental Physics. “It can be just fragments of plastic and energy, and the energy source can be provided from outside the robot.”

The institute unveiled its new invention in late August in the scientific journal Advanced Optical Materials to much fanfare in Poland. The news came just a few weeks after researchers in Italy unveiled their own soft robot — an octopus — that they intend to use to explore the Mediterranean seabed.