Nature inspired the mankind to create all sorts of machine and devices and just when you thought we mined every bit of information from the animal/vegetable world, boom - we started copying them by whole. Robot fish, snakes, a huge friggin’ cheetah, mules for the army and now scientists just came up with a motorized flabby octopus.
Octopuses are some of the most fascinating creatures on the planet, being such different with the way they camouflage themselves, move, eat and defend against predators. No surprise that a team of scientists from the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) in Greece have come up with a robotized version of the marine creature.
Several octopus species have been studied to create the robotic version, which according to the team, achieved speeds of 0.5 body lengths per second and propulsive forces of up to 10.5 N at a cost of transport as low as 0.62 (COT = measure of efficiency, calculated as P/mgv where P = the power input, m = mass, g = gravity, v = velocity).
For comparison reasons, humans have a COT of 0.1 when walking and almost half that when cycling. The “roboctopus” had a COT equal to 0.85 before that flexible silicone webbing has been added to its tentacles.
The mechanical creature can also crawl and carry objects around, but still it doesn’t make much sense now that we have the good ol’ propeller system which can easily and efficiently power a submersible vehicle.
Still, scientists believe the roboctopus will aid with deep sea exploration as no other creatures got intimidated or bothered by it when testing moved to the real world.
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