This tentacle bot is like your tiny, personal Cthulhu

Not an Elder God or octopus, but still want to pick up things with tentacles? 

Look no further than this octopus-inspired soft robotic arm that you can use to manipulate objects. 

Created by the researchers at the (SEAS) and Beihang University, the little tentacle arm can firmly grab and move objects such as eggs, iPhones, medicine balls, and, yes, live crabs. 

Image: Bertoldi Lab/Harvard SEAS

Beyond being cute, there’s some interesting science behind the robot. According to co-author of the paper behind the bot, August Domel, “most previous research on octopus-inspired robots focused either on mimicking the suction or the movement of the arm, but not both.” 

By combining both traits into one device, the researchers were able to grip objects with a single tentacle, whereas traditional approaches would require multiple tentacles to achieve the same feat. 

As you can see in the video above, the researchers successfully tested the robotic arm on a variety of objects of varying shapes and sizes, and were even able to retrieve objects from confined spaces. 

The results of the study could help researches build a next-generation of soft robotic actuators, as well as help us understand how octopi do the cool things they do.