A team of Harvard and MIT scientists has developed origami-inspired robots that can fold themselves and walk on their own.

According to BBC News, the robots' creators used flat materials with the ability to generate heat on its own, thus catalyzing their self-construction. The team said these robots should help scientists develop future intricate devices without spending too much cash.

The team published a study on their work in the journal Science.

"I'm sure people have seen in examples of origami - you can use folding to create fantastically complex structures," study lead researcher Robert Wood, professor at Harvard, told BBC News. "But once the complexity of these things exceeds a threshold, folding them by hand becomes painstaking.

"We [incorporated] motors and batteries while it was flat."

Wood indicated that the small, self-forming robots could serve everyday purposes as well as highly important scientific missions, likening them to 3-D printing.

"Imagine self-deploying structures - maybe shelters or structures for space exploration or for satellites," he said. "Things where the logistics are difficult, like humanitarian aid in war zones.

"We're trying to provide tools for people - whether they're engineers or not - to build complex structures for whatever they want."

Co-author of a separate study, Christian Santangelo, a physicist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said his team chose origami because it takes something as simple as paper and gives it a new, highly customizable form. The other study was also published in the journal Science.

"A single sheet of paper has certain properties, but when you fold it into a particular pattern, it suddenly has new properties," Santangelo told the Washington Post. "So the idea is that you could use paper folding to make new materials, and ones with the properties you want - even if they aren't found in nature."