Robot octopus has just been recently installed with a very soft and supple silicone web that almost doubled its peed. Early last year, a research from Greece wanted to find out what kind of gaits would be most effective in trying to propel a robot octopus through the water. It looks like they have finally gotten the answer to their question.
The researchers have previously stated that they were working on being able to add another physical feature to their robot octopus, which turned out to be a web that they placed between the octopus' tentacles.
Apart from increasing the speed of the robot octopus, the researchers have also taught it how to crawl, swim freely, and carry objects in the Aegean Sea.
The video that the researchers made actually has four parts. In the first part, the differences in the performance of the robot octopus were highlighted. How the octopus swam with only the flexible arms and how it did so with the flexible arms with the web was compared. Obviously, there were some huge differences in its speed. Now, with the web, the robot octopus can swim up to 180 mm/s as compared to its earlier version, which only reached a maximum speed of 100 mm/s.
The video also shows the robot octopus crawling on the ground, carrying a yellow ball that it held with two of its tentacles, and swimming out further into the sea.
Also, the researchers pointed out that a bunch of little fishes have even followed the robot octopus around as it continued to swim. This suggested that the robot octopus can be a successful tool and a good platform when it comes to observing ocean life without having to disturb its natural flora.
The robot octopus, which was coined as the "Multi-arm Robotic Swimming with Octopus-Inspired Compliant Web," by Asimina Kazakidi, Michael Sfakiotakis, Theodorus Evdaimon, Avgousta Chatzidaki, and Dimitris P. Tsakiris, from the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas or FORTH, was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligence Robots and Systems or IROS just last week.
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