Bioinspired locomotion and grasping in water: the soft eight-arm OCTOPUS robot

TLDR

The octopus is an attractive model for soft robotics because of its high deformability, dexterity, and rich behavioural repertoire. The study investigates octopus dexterity by designing an eight‑arm soft robot and evaluating its performance in focused experiments. The OCTOPUS robot is a fully soft, eight‑arm system with a central processing core, where front arms perform elongation and grasping, the remaining arms enable locomotion, and the device operates neutrally buoyant in water. Experimental results show the robot can walk in water using the animal’s strategy across varied surfaces, including through physical constraints, and can grasp objects of diverse sizes and shapes with its soft, conical arms.

Abstract

The octopus is an interesting model for the development of soft robotics, due to its high deformability, dexterity and rich behavioural repertoire. To investigate the principles of octopus dexterity, we designed an eight-arm soft robot and evaluated its performance with focused experiments. The OCTOPUS robot presented here is a completely soft robot, which integrates eight arms extending in radial direction and a central body which contains the main processing units. The front arms are mainly used for elongation and grasping, while the others are mainly used for locomotion. The robotic octopus works in water and its buoyancy is close to neutral. The experimental results show that the octopus-inspired robot can walk in water using the same strategy as the animal model, with good performance over different surfaces, including walking through physical constraints. It can grasp objects of different sizes and shapes, thanks to its soft arm materials and conical shape.