Bizarre Tentacle Robot Looks Like It Emerged From 'The Matrix'
The robot might appear creepy, but it has a gentle touch.
Once again, science reality is looking a lot like science fiction. A new soft tentacle gripper robot resembles an octopus, a tangle of sentient spaghetti or those flying tentacle-monster-bots from The Matrix. It's inspired by curly hair and (despite its odd appearance) represents a surprisingly gentle way to pick up fragile objects.
The robot comes from researchers at Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The team published a paper detailing its work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal this month.
The best way to get acquainted with the wild and wonderful robot is through Harvard's video showing it in action:
@cnetdotcom This tentacle #robot can gently hold fragile objects. #harvard #robottok #tentacles #octopus #jellyfish #engineering #robottok #tech #techtok #engineeringtok #entanglement #science #tentacleentanglement ♬ original sound - CNET
The robot is a cleverly simple design that uses inflation to activate its grip. It's designed to entangle objects without damaging them. "Alone, individual tentacles, or filaments, are weak. But together, the collection of filaments can grasp and securely hold heavy and oddly shaped objects," the school of engineering and applied sciences said in a statement last week.
A closer look shows how a tentacle wraps around an object.
The tentacles are rubber tubes with thicker walls on one side that cause them to curl up when inflated. The researchers envision the robot working with delicate items like fruits or glassware, or as a gripper for medical uses.
The robot doesn't need complicated sensors or software to function. "This new approach to robotic grasping complements existing solutions by replacing simple, traditional grippers that require complex control strategies with extremely compliant, and morphologically complex filaments that can operate with very simple control," said study co-author Robert Wood.
We've seen variations on the tentacle-robot theme in the past, including this single-tentacle gripper and a robotic octopus. What's missing for the new one is a catchy name. I'm rooting for Cthulhu-bot or flying spaghetti robot.