Octopus arms seem to be a big thing this year. At first, I thought this was another look at the Kyushu arm, or perhaps the UIUC backpack.
No, this is yet another lab, doing octopus inspired robot arms [2].
And it's even cooler, at least to a psychology major, because they put in biomimetic sensors, so you can feel what an octopus feels.
As Bianca Nogrady put it this let's people ask, "How does it feel to have an octopus arm?" [1].
Cool!
This is an amazing piece of work. A robot octopus arm. Suckers with sensors. A wearable interface for your finger that lets you feel with the tip of the arm, and direct the movement of the arm.
This device lets you grab stuff the way an octopus does, whipping out the arm which extends, catches, and wraps around the target. These complicated operations are done with a minimum of control logic. The "intelligence" is embodied in the design of the arm.
A soft robotic tentacle inspired by octopuses can grasp small objects in air or water. Image Credit: Li Wen (From [1])
As the researchers note, this project is an interesting insight into how octopuses do it, and also offers design possibilities for robot arms.
Very nice work.
- Bianca Nogrady, How does it feel to have an octopus arm? This robo-tentacle lets people find out, in Nature - News, November 29, 2023. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03759-z
- Zhexin Xie, Feiyang Yuan, Jiaqi Liu, Lufeng Tian, Bohan Chen, Zhongqiang Fu, Sizhe Mao, Tongtong Jin, Yun Wang, Xia He, Gang Wang, Yanru Mo, Xilun Ding, Yihui Zhang, Cecilia Laschi, and Li Wen, Octopus-inspired sensorized soft arm for environmental interaction. Science Robotics, 8 (84):eadh7852, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adh7852
Robot Wednesday
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