ITALY: Soft-bodied robotic octopus arm has been created by scientists in Italy. The waterproof limb is designed to mimic an octopus appendage as a model for underwater rescue robots of the future

Record ID: 401818

  • Title: ITALY: Soft-bodied robotic octopus arm has been created by scientists in Italy. The waterproof limb is designed to mimic an octopus appendage as a model for underwater rescue robots of the future
  • Date: 16th February 2012
  • Summary: LIVORNO, ITALY (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) CECILIA LASCHI, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF BIOROBOTICS AT THE SCUOLA SUPERIORE SANT'ANNA, SAYING: "(The) first thought one can have is to put them in the water and use them for explorations in the sea, for example in the sea bottom. The usual robotic vehicles that you use in the sea cannot usually go very close to the bo
  • Embargoed: 2nd March 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Italy, Italy
  • Country: Italy
  • Topics: Science
  • Reuters ID: LVAAWJWOSIYWTHCOWZXKO79D81MI
  • Story Text: The creation of a robotic octopus arm that can grip a human hand and grab a plastic bottle is the first stage of a project by European scientists to create a full-bodied synthetic sea creature which could be used to save people trapped underwater.
    The arm project, based at Italy's Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, is part of the 10 million Euro (13 million US dollars) Octopus Project, funded by the European Commission's (EC) interdisciplinary Future and Emerging Technologies scheme.
    Cecilia Laschi is Associate Professor of Biorobotics at the Scuola, based in Livorno, a coastal town in Tuscany.
    Laschi says an octopus is the perfect creature to recreate because of its unusual, elastic musculature, typically found only in tongues and elephant trunks.
    The team's robotic prototype is approximately 43 centimetres (17 inches) long and modelled after an octopus species that inhabits the Mediterranean. The waterproof arm is made from silicone and soft rubber and embedded with a steel cable anchored to a set of nylon cables alongside artificial muscle fibres, allowing it to flex or stretch when an electric potential is applied.
    By manipulating the cable, the arm can grasp objects. Before creating the arm the team studied the octopus's movement and found that in order to push, the arms shorten and elongate. A braided mesh sleeve was designed to mimic this, maximising the arm's flexibility.
    "We designed purposively (sic) this special braid which provides this flexibility but also the possibility to elongate the arm and shorten it, like in the animal, so it allows all these deformations that we want but still keeps the conical shape of the arm," Laschi explained.
    The arm contains lifelike circular suckers which help the octopus stick to objects by forming a seal. It's also equipped with contact sensors, placed under the surface, that detect an object in its reach.
    "We also studied the skin of the animal, which has a very important role. Of course it is very much stretchable to allow the deformations. It has suckers that are very important in the animal for grasping, and there are tactile sensors. So we put our artificial tactile sensors under the suckers so that the robot can perceive the contacts when grasping objects," said Laschi.
    The team plan to complete a soft, full body robotic octopus with eight arms by January 2013. Laschi says the full robot's potential is enormous.
    "(The) first thought one can have is to put them in the water and use them for explorations in the sea, for example in the sea bottom. The usual robotic vehicles that you use in the sea cannot usually go very close to the bottom. Instead the octopus could be very complementary and really go and explore the sea bottom," she said.
    The robot could one day be controlled remotely to rescue people in difficult underwater environments.
    A team of British surgeons are interested in applying Laschi's team's technology to an endoscope that turns from a soft tool into a hard one that can perform surgery.
    "We discovered that the octopus technologies can be used for developing soft endoscopes, so endoscopes that go inside the human body, so they need to be soft but they also need to become rigid, stiff, when they have to do the operations inside the human body," Laschi explained.
    Creating functional soft robots is an enormous challenge because most engineering is based on rigid materials, while the technologies for building soft, pliant, structures are not as well developed. Other bio-inspired soft robots have locomotion, but cannot grasp and manipulate objects like an octopus.
    The Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna team have been working with scientists at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and the Centre for Micro-BioRobotics in Pontedera, Italy.
    Before the full robot is built the team's next step will be looking at how to make the robo-octopus move on different terrains.
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