Crawlabouts were a type of small craft used to conduct maintenance on the exterior of a space station. A number of crawlabouts were assigned to Deep Space 9 in 2370. Despite their name, crawlabouts did not crawl on the surface; Instead, they had tiny thrusters with a negligible amount of power. (DS9 novel: Betrayal)

Based on their description, it is possible that crawlabout was just a nickname for Work Bees or Work Bugs. The name is also notably similar to the larger, longer range, runabouts.