It seems every other week , scientists and engineers seek to come up with a good version of arobot claw machine – they ’ve even tried usingdeadspiders . The late offering in the barbaric world ofroboticshas seen researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences ( SEAS ) modernize a newfangled robot , and this one has tentacles .

Picking up soft objects is notoriously difficult for robot , as it usually requires feedback cringle and lots of forward preparation . Inspired by nature , the squad has made a new type of soft robotlike gripper that features twelve soft tentacles to mat the objects . Researchers call them fluidically incite slender hollow elastomeric filaments .

found on how ajellyfishmight capture target , the assembling of tentacles is strong than one tentacle alone . This allow the automaton to wrap around and then hoist fragile objects without breaking them . The researchers call this outgrowth active corporate entanglement .

" By taking advantage of the lifelike compliance of soft robotics and enhancing it with a compliant structure , we design a gripper that is greater than the sum of its part and a grok strategy that can adapt to a image of complex objects with minimal planning and percept , "   said Kaitlyn Becker , former graduate student and postdoctoral cuss at SEAS and first generator of the study , in astatement .

But how does it do work ?

While former machinelike grippers have used complex feedback loops , this one works by using bare ostentation and pneumatics . The tentacles , which are intimately a foot long each ( 30 centimeters ) , are hollow subway system .

Eight of the tentacles are coif on a 50 - millimeter ( 1.9 - in ) diam circle with the remain four on a 25 - millimeter ( 0.98 - in ) diam concentric band . One side of each tube is thicker than the other , which means they curl when the underground is pressurized .

While jointly the hold is substantial enough to rescind the object , the single subway system have a watery impinging , so wo n’t damage the fragile Earth’s surface of the item . Not all of the twelve tentacles are involved in every grab , but the team says more could be added to increase the chances of a successful pickup and to tangle with each other .

The newspaper publisher is published inPNAS .