Octopus arm robot moves likes the real deal

When it comes to robots, most of us would think of their movement as clumsy and rather jerky – unless, of course, one is a cyborg. Well, movies such as I, Robot, did have a rather athletic robot, but the rest that we’ve seen so far tend to lean more on the sloth side. Not so with the octopus arm robot that you see above, caught in a screenshot of its video. This soft-bodied robotic octopus arm was developed by scientists in Italy, where the waterproof limb hopes to mimic an octopus arm in order to function as an example for underwater rescue robots down the road. Could it be applied to an endoscope in order to perform surgery in the future? Only time will tell, but can someone make those suckers work just like in the natural world? That’d be totally cool.

Come on now, I know what you are thinking already. Forget about all the other innovative applications of the octopus arm robot, and get a toy company like Hasbro to come up with a Davy Jones interactive mask already, complete with unnervingly realistic, lifelike tentacles as your mustache. You know you want it, and in meme parlance, “Shut up and take my money already!”

Edwin Kee
Categories: Robots
Tags: Robot