Nature has long proven itself to be an extremely fertile ground when it comes to inspiring many inventions in the realm of science. For instance, this particular robot that was inspired by an octopus, where it boasts of delicate hand and arm movements which would bode well when it comes to performing surgery. After all, in the course of a surgery on some of the body’s softest tissues, extreme caution is required since it is equivalent to shaving a balloon without popping it.
Robots have no issues when it comes to wielding tools, but so far they have always carried the inherent risk of injuring surrounding tissues, making the situation all the more tense when it involves the shifting of organs or to lift them up so that other tools can gain access to different parts of the body.
A team of Italian robotics experts has successfully constructed a surgical robot that received inspiration from octopus tentacles, where it boasts of three connected cylindrical chambers. These octo-arms could bend to 255 degrees and stretch up to 62 percent of their original length, and in experiments, navigate the squishy balloons that represent one’s delicate innards. Could we see more and more robots do their bit in the surgery room down the road?