This isn’t a robotic octopus, just a bizarre octopus-inspired robot arm developed by researchers from Beihang University and a colleague from Tsinghua University. This soft robotic device resembles its real-life counterpart, capable of furling, stretching and unfurling when required.
By applying vacuum pressure inside the cups on its underside, the arm can then securely grasp objects after curling around them. To achieve this, the team utilized mathematical propagation for each of its five segments, thus mimicking the nervous system of an octopus arm. Electrical messages are transmitted over liquid metal wires, while the tips of the cups have both suction cups and temperature sensors.
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We decided to do this project because we saw how octopus capture prey in a very elegant way. The animal uses very, very few control signals from the brain to the arm. The arm itself has the nervous system arranged in a way that’s a sequential activation, so the processing computing effort is very limited,” said Cecilia Laschi, a biorobotics engineer at the National University of Singapore.
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