Octopuses Garden

Here's a really fascinating piece in National Geographic on octopuses (octopii???) and how they use their eight arms, speculating that the octopus solution made be ideal for robotic arms:

Theoretically, there are any number of ways an octopus could use its long flexible arms to move an object. But the method they actually use is surprisingly close to how animals with rigid skeletons—including humans—do it, scientists say.

When hunting and grabbing dinner, the octopus uses all the flexibility the arm is capable of. But to bring captured prey to its mouth, the octopus turns the arm into a semi-rigid structure that bends to form quasi joints. Just as a human arm has joints at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist that allow our arms to bend and rotate, the octopus bends its arm to forming three segments of roughly equal length.

Understanding how the octopus controls eight flexible arms all at once could be the basis for developing the next generation of flexible robotic arms—long a goal among robotics engineers.

Cool stuff! As I'm update, I've been slacking on my robot because of the Ebola-Thon, which is now in its fifth day. I hate to try and solder a circuitboard under the influence of Nyquel.