Scientists develop Octopus-like robot with ultra-fast propulsion

Scientists from the University of Southampton have developed an octopus-like robot, which can zoom through water with ultra-fast propulsion and acceleration never before seen in man-made underwater vehicles.

Scientists have built a deformable octopus-like robot with a 3D printed skeleton with no moving parts and no energy storage device, other than a thin elastic outer hull.

Dr Gabriel Weymouth, Lecturer for the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute at the University of Southampton and lead author of the study said: "Man-made underwater vehicle are designed to be as streamlined as possible, but with the exception of torpedoes, which use massive amounts of propellant, none of these vehicles achieve speeds of even a single body length per second or accelerations of 0.1g, despite significant mechanical complexity."

The study, which is published in Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, was funded with support from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology and from the MIT Sea Grant program.