Seems like you need temperatures of about ~140C (280F) to make this work.
Unfortunately, I think their hope of using these in soft robots may be complicated by the high operating temperature required. Wonder if they can make crystals which exhibit these effects closer to room temperature.
The "new field of crystal robotics" bit comes directly from the original paper's abstract, and from an interview quote in the article with the head researcher. The article itself is a perfectly reasonable summary for non-physicists. I don't see what the problem is.
Of course without the click-baity headline, is it really that interesting? Cool idea, but going from a crystal twitching in a petri dish to crystal robots will take decades of work.
