Researchers are working on robots that look like octopus arms, elephant trunks, and giraffe tongues, continuing the trend of developing machines inspired by animals.
The "tentacle robots" are being developed to provide aid in different situations in space missions, with scientists saying it can be used to inspect gear that is difficult to reach on the International Space Station (ISS), according to Space.com.
Ian Walker, roboticist from Clemson University, talked about the capabilities these robots in April at a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations working group, saying they will be able to accomplish tasks that couldn't be done by conventional robots. Such robots include those designed to look like the human arm and complete the same task over and over again, and Walker said they are limited in their flexibility and longevity.
"What we want to do is something rather different than that," he said, adding that the aim is to create "something that can adapt its shape more completely down its structure, and to be able to adapt to environments you haven't seen before. So it's the non-factory scenario, in many ways."
His team's project, called Octarm, is just one of the machines they have been working on for the past 15 years. Other robots include those inspired by elephant trunks, octopus arms and climbing vines.
One of the potential uses for these flexible robots is gathering data from environments like cracks in the moon or other planets, Space.com reported. Walker said the robots' ability to reach out and grab objects is inspired by different monkeys that use their tails to grab things. He added that they can also be used to check the outside of the space station for damage from micrometeoroids. Astronauts and other robots aboard the ISS can use them as tools for general purposes.
"They would basically have a robot lasso, or a robot rope, that would be part of their toolkit that they could deploy in situations that called for it," Walker said.
Octarm has demonstrated several abilities since its creation, such as grabbing and stacking cones of different sizes, traveling through tunnels and handling objects it hadn't encountered before while underwater, Space.com reported. Walker said it only cost a few thousand dollars to build Octarm, and that these kinds of robots are cheap and easy to build if its designers are knowledgeable about the technology.
He added that while work still needs to be done to make sure these flexible robots can perform their tasks, they may be used widely in the near future.
"At the progress we're making right now, I would be surprised if there aren't things that look intelligent and [are] intelligent in, say, a decade."
