I'm not getting why this is supposed to be impressive. It just looks like they lined up several tiny motors and used a small gear ratio. There's very little ant-like cooperation.
Edit: large -> small
Edit: large -> small
The researchers observed that the ants get great cooperative force by each using three of their six legs simultaneously.
“By considering the dynamics of the team, not just the individual, we are able to build a team of our ‘microTug’ robots that, like ants, are superstrong individually, but then also work together as a team,” said David Christensen, a graduate student who is one of the authors of a research paper describing the feat. The paper will be presented this May at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Stockholm.
I mean, Philae was just a small probe that barely sent back some signals and grainy photos from a comet. I don't see what's so impressive about that.
What's your point of reference for judging these robots? Unless you're well-versed in the field you probably aren't qualified to say whether or not this is good or bad work. Consequently it's not that unreasonable to accept the article at face value. It's not like you've got anything to lose.
You don't look stupid if you believe a believable story so cynically protecting yourself by saying it's unimpressive compared to, say, the latest Boston Dynamics video, isn't really very fair on the people who did the work.