Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hello, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the feature and says I'd like to
Speaker 1: be under the sea. I'm Lauren bog Obama, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And our regular host Jonathan Strickland is not
Speaker 1: with us this week. He is at CS covering technology technologies.
Speaker 1: We are also going to talk about some terrific tentacle
Speaker 1: technologies today. Yes, you heard Lauren right, We're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about tentacle technology today. Yeah. So we hope
Speaker 1: that you like BioMedics podcasts real well, because those are
Speaker 1: basically our favorite things, I think, especially when Jonathan is
Speaker 1: not in office to monitor us. Yeah, if you haven't
Speaker 1: been around for previous podcast episodes when Jonathan wasn't here,
Speaker 1: we did I think bees and some other kind of bugs. Ants. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I think we did ants with Jonathan. Spiders, might have
Speaker 1: done spiders without him. We did bugs ones for a
Speaker 1: long time, and and we kind of are running out
Speaker 1: of bugs to talk about, which is weird because there's
Speaker 1: there's trillions of them there are there are Well, we
Speaker 1: also did some some cockroach stuff a couple episodes ago.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Yeah, so, so we decided to move on
Speaker 1: to something else kind of creepy, and the tentacles and
Speaker 1: or arms would be a really good route. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: when you picture the robots of the future, they've got
Speaker 1: to have tentacles, right, They've got to have them, because
Speaker 1: tentacles are really the best kind of appendage. They're awesome.
Speaker 1: Humans would be better if we had them. I think
Speaker 1: bears would be marginally improved with tentacles. They're pretty much
Speaker 1: the best. They wouldn't be improved for my personal use,
Speaker 1: I would prefer bears to not have tentacles, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure bears would love to have them. I'm going to
Speaker 1: go ahead and speak for bears definitively. I'm a supporter
Speaker 1: of the Second Amendment, the right to bear tentacles. Oh goodness,
Speaker 1: my gracious, I walked into that one so hard. Hold
Speaker 1: on a second, what was that joke I just made? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm playing on a little vocab disclaimer we need to make,
Speaker 1: which is tentacles versus arms? Yes, which I kind of
Speaker 1: mentioned a second ago. But um, alright, So so octopi
Speaker 1: or octopuses, whichever you prefer. I think it's octopuses. If
Speaker 1: you don't want to sound like a jerk. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: never stopped us before here on forward thinking. Um, So,
Speaker 1: so octopuses have arms. Yeah, octopuses have eight arms. These
Speaker 1: are eight non retractable arms, and that's all they got,
Speaker 1: just the arms. Squid and cuttlefish, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: they have those eight arms, those eight non retractable arms
Speaker 1: going out, but they've also got two longer appendages that
Speaker 1: are technically tentacles tentacles. These are what a scientist would
Speaker 1: call a tentacle. It's what we can call tentacles as well.
Speaker 1: I mean really anyone can. But yes, the the official
Speaker 1: biological definition um is tentacles. And that's because they're a
Speaker 1: little bit different. Um. Tentacles tend to end in in
Speaker 1: what's term it's it's a club. Yeah, it's a sort
Speaker 1: of leaf shaped swelling out at the end of the tentacle.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's called a club. And the tentacles, i
Speaker 1: think typically are used more often specifically for catching prey,
Speaker 1: whereas the arms of a squid or an octopus they
Speaker 1: can grab things, they can catch prey, but they can
Speaker 1: also be used for swimming and walking around and clinging
Speaker 1: to surfaces and picking things up there. They're more all purpose,
Speaker 1: right right. And also, arms are usually covered entirely in
Speaker 1: uh suckers or section cups on the undersides, yet on
Speaker 1: the underside is correct, whereas tentacles will only have those
Speaker 1: section cups on that club end. Yes, arms also may
Speaker 1: have a siri or or palps, which are these uh
Speaker 1: kind of kind of worm like things that come off
Speaker 1: of them in order to do stuff that sound beautiful nature, y'all.
Speaker 1: And arms have one more feature. They sometimes will have hooks,
Speaker 1: which are a kind of modified suction cup, which is
Speaker 1: for hooking. I suppose, yeah, I think some species have
Speaker 1: well hooks, they're they're just hooks. That's cool. I I
Speaker 1: like I like hooks. I like captain hook. I like pirates.
Speaker 1: Both arms and tentacles are what you would call a
Speaker 1: muscular hydrostat which is a muscle that doesn't need to
Speaker 1: move a bone. It does its work all on its own.
Speaker 1: So it would be a muscle kind of like your
Speaker 1: tongue or like an elephant's trunk. And so there is
Speaker 1: a scientific distinction between arms and tentacles in a creature
Speaker 1: like a squid. But we're going to kind of go
Speaker 1: with the common usage today where to the average person,
Speaker 1: those eight things on an octopus, they're all tentacles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll we'll refer to them as tentacles. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: we we respect the biological difference, but tentacles is a
Speaker 1: lot funnier to say. It is a funnier word. So
Speaker 1: let's get into some of these biomemetics, because, as we've
Speaker 1: seen on this podcast many times before, a lot of
Speaker 1: scientists and engineers love to look to nature to figure
Speaker 1: out draw inspiration. Yeah right, how to build their robots
Speaker 1: or their tiny nano machines or create new materials. Is
Speaker 1: just there's a lot of research that's already gone into nature,
Speaker 1: that's been done by evolution. Let's just steal their work.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, just just plagiarize all of that and send
Speaker 1: it into space. What, yes, tentacle robots in space. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about tentacle limbs to go on robots
Speaker 1: for grasping, Yes, tell me about it. Well, one of
Speaker 1: the classic robot problems that we talked about a lot
Speaker 1: on this show is is flexibility, um and and that's
Speaker 1: you know, most robot arms are are really rigid and
Speaker 1: kind of unforgiving. You don't want to put a baby
Speaker 1: next to it. Um, they're bad at at dealing with
Speaker 1: different kinds of materials and especially with unknown material reels.
Speaker 1: It's really tough to to teach a robot how to
Speaker 1: pick something up when it's never seen that thing before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it might not know how delicate it is. And
Speaker 1: there are all these different variables that go into the
Speaker 1: sort of unconscious calculations your body does when you pick
Speaker 1: up a foreign object. Sure, sure it sounds really simple,
Speaker 1: but if you go to pick up a cup, your
Speaker 1: your fingers are giving you a lot of feedback about
Speaker 1: how squishable that cup is and how heavy it is,
Speaker 1: and what you need to do there for in order
Speaker 1: to get a good grip on it and not you know,
Speaker 1: spill its contents all over yourself. Okay, so uh, tentacles
Speaker 1: better at doing this than rigid arms, really, yes, well,
Speaker 1: because you know they can conform to an object and
Speaker 1: kind of grip it as tightly as they need to
Speaker 1: without hope, hopefully without you know, hulking and just just
Speaker 1: spilling everything everywhere. Um. I assume that people I love
Speaker 1: the cup metaphor, but there the cup example. But I
Speaker 1: assume that robots pick up things other than cups pretty
Speaker 1: frequently anyway. Um, some researchers and roboticists like Ian Walker
Speaker 1: of Clemson University are working on creating creepy, wonderful robotic tentacles.
Speaker 1: Um and yes, inspired by stuff like octopus arms and
Speaker 1: elephant trunks and giraffe tongues and climbing vines and all
Speaker 1: that good kind of stuff. Um, they they have been
Speaker 1: building these robotic arms that are capable of twisting around
Speaker 1: and grasping objects of varying shapes and materials, like, for example,
Speaker 1: the oct arm Lauren O C T A r M
Speaker 1: oct arm. I like the sound of that. It's pretty great. Um.
Speaker 1: It's a pneumatic robot arm. And it came out of
Speaker 1: a DARPA funded project from two thousand three to two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. And since Jonathan is not here, I'll
Speaker 1: go ahead and say it DARPA. That's the US Defense
Speaker 1: Advanced Research Projects Agency. Why I've never heard of that before.
Speaker 1: We shall call it DARPA from now on. And according
Speaker 1: to Ian Walker via space dot Com, this thing, this,
Speaker 1: this arm can grab and stack cones of varying sizes,
Speaker 1: explore tunnel like environments, and manipulate objects it had never
Speaker 1: encountered before while submerged in water. Um, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if I can do all of those things every day.
Speaker 1: So that's so, that's pretty rap. I can do almost
Speaker 1: nothing while submerged in water because I never figured out
Speaker 1: how to open my eyes underwater. It's it's rough. It stings, man. Um,
Speaker 1: goggles are great, it's this new technology we might we
Speaker 1: could talk about later. Um. But but so robots like
Speaker 1: this aren't even expensive to build, but they are tricky
Speaker 1: to program, is the only probably, Yeah, I can see
Speaker 1: how that would be. Yeah. Um, but there are other
Speaker 1: octopus inspired robot arms. Yeah yeah, well not just octopus,
Speaker 1: but I guess all kinds of tentacle, cephalopod arm whatever
Speaker 1: you call these grasping, swiggly things. One of them, that's
Speaker 1: a recent one I just read about today was the
Speaker 1: m I T Soft Rubber Robot Arms. So at m
Speaker 1: I T s c Sale, that's the Computer Science and
Speaker 1: Artificial Intelligence Lab under the direction of daniellow Rouse. And
Speaker 1: her name should be familiar to you if you've listened
Speaker 1: to this podcast for a while, because I keep seeing
Speaker 1: her associated with weird awesome stuff that comes up here. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: that lab has turned out some really cool robots, and
Speaker 1: a recent one which I read about in an M
Speaker 1: I T press release from septemb is a soft rubber
Speaker 1: robotic arm that can move around by sort of writhing
Speaker 1: and slithering. Some descriptions compared it to a slithering snake,
Speaker 1: but the press release actually stipulated that was inspired by
Speaker 1: an octopus arm. It's made of silicone and that's sort
Speaker 1: of for the soft touch with three D printed molds.
Speaker 1: And if you watch the video that they released of
Speaker 1: this thing, you can see how it controls its slithering motion,
Speaker 1: which is through tension and release of the soft silicone
Speaker 1: parts by inflating and contracting gas sacs and it looks
Speaker 1: really cool. If you had a robot with real arms
Speaker 1: like this, ideally it would be able to sort of
Speaker 1: reach down on into a crack or a hole or
Speaker 1: a pipe or you know, any kind of chasm, anything
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't want to put your arm down into
Speaker 1: my eye socket. I don't know. Whatever it is, it
Speaker 1: can reach down with a sort of grasping manipulator that
Speaker 1: would be quote as soft as chewing gum, which is
Speaker 1: so sweet because, again, as you mentioned, most robots are hard.
Speaker 1: They're not. They're not soft and cuddly and nice. Yeah. No, again,
Speaker 1: it's the baby test, like if like, like, would you
Speaker 1: want to put this on your baby? Right, like, if
Speaker 1: your baby fell down a pipe, you'd want a soft
Speaker 1: arm that could go and wrap it up and pull
Speaker 1: it back out, back out gently. That would be much preferable. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, and there are. Obviously, these are not the
Speaker 1: only grasping robot arms inspired by cephalopod arms and tentacles. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we will talk about a few more of them
Speaker 1: later on in the podcast. But first, let's talk more
Speaker 1: about motion. Yeah, let's let's go a little bit deeper
Speaker 1: into your dreams slash nightmares. Okay, so we've already got
Speaker 1: robots that are getting toward being able to grasp things
Speaker 1: and manipulate them like an octopus or a squid. What
Speaker 1: about the way octopuses? Was that the plural we agreed
Speaker 1: on octopuses? Yeah? What about the way octopuses and squids move?
Speaker 1: So a topic we often come back to is robot locomotion,
Speaker 1: because getting from one place to another isn't always as
Speaker 1: easy as it would seem. Yeah, Yeah, that's that's one
Speaker 1: of those other classic problems. Yeah, especially for machines, so
Speaker 1: wheels are pretty dependable. At this point. You can make
Speaker 1: a self driving car that if it stays on the road,
Speaker 1: works pretty well, but that won't work everywhere. What if
Speaker 1: your robot needs to climb a tree or a rocky hillside,
Speaker 1: or descend into a crevice or swim in the ocean. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to deal with this now. A group
Speaker 1: of researchers in Europe have working on creating and studying
Speaker 1: a species of robot octopus that can swim. Robot octopus,
Speaker 1: robot octopus that can swim. We're we're creating swimming robot octopuses. Now. Now,
Speaker 1: what I've seen is not a full octopus with like
Speaker 1: you know, an octopus soul and octopus eyes. It was
Speaker 1: more just kind of a tentacle. This would be arms technically,
Speaker 1: but we've said before they're sort of interchangeable, as we're
Speaker 1: using a sort of arm tentacle motion simulator. In May,
Speaker 1: at the i Tripoli International Conference on Robotics and Automation
Speaker 1: and Karl's Rue Germany, a team of researchers who I
Speaker 1: think we're all from Greece gave a presentation entitled octopus
Speaker 1: inspired eight arm robotics swimming by sculling movements. That's another
Speaker 1: verb I like. I'll explain that in just a minute. Uh.
Speaker 1: Before I get into that, I found a background explanation
Speaker 1: where Dr Dimitris sarkia Us, who is one of the researchers,
Speaker 1: explains why you might want something like a robotic octopus.
Speaker 1: So we want to have robots that can move around
Speaker 1: freely underwater, and this is important for a lot of
Speaker 1: different applications. Imagine you need to do industrial maintenance on
Speaker 1: an underwater structure, or you need to do remote research
Speaker 1: in an underwater cave, or search and rescue on a shipwreck,
Speaker 1: like where the ship has become submerged, but there might
Speaker 1: be survivors trapped in air pockets inside. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you ever read any of those stories, but they're terrifying.
Speaker 1: I do not read them because they are terrifying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or search and rescue, and say even something like a
Speaker 1: flooded urban area. You know, maybe there's a flood and
Speaker 1: their basements and things like that. Anyway, it's important for
Speaker 1: these kind of robots to be highly mobile, but it's
Speaker 1: also important for them to be highly dextrous, so they
Speaker 1: can open doors, pick up objects, move things around, or
Speaker 1: you know, even gently hugged the torso of a live human.
Speaker 1: So you could try to accomplish that by pairing to
Speaker 1: other different elements. So you have propellers for motion, and
Speaker 1: then you have some kind of protruding robotic claw arms
Speaker 1: or whatever kind of manipulator you want for the limbs.
Speaker 1: But what if we maximize deficiency by pairing propulsion and
Speaker 1: manipulation together into one machine feature. Yeah, because that's what
Speaker 1: octopus is already do. Right, So the soft flexible arms
Speaker 1: of an octopus connect as swimming limbs, walking limbs, and
Speaker 1: grasping limbs. Can we do that with a robot? Well,
Speaker 1: the conference presentation showed the results of a study of
Speaker 1: octopus inspired swimming motion. As I said, uh so, the
Speaker 1: relevant type of octopus swimming is what you'd call sculling.
Speaker 1: It's also sort of what those fancy Ivy League rowboat
Speaker 1: kids do. It's it's a type of rowing. So it's
Speaker 1: where you use multiple ores at once and you're pushing
Speaker 1: through the water to propel yourself forward with oars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they all push in synchronization to drive the main body
Speaker 1: forward and the team study different octopus robots sculling motions
Speaker 1: with dynamical models. So these were computer simulations. They did
Speaker 1: simulations in software that try to simulate fluid dynamics to
Speaker 1: predict the performance of different systems dealing with real world conditions.
Speaker 1: They also built three D prototypes and got them swimming
Speaker 1: around in a water tank. There is video of this
Speaker 1: on YouTube and it is beautiful. It's really weird. You
Speaker 1: should check it out. Yeah, so they tested different gates
Speaker 1: what they called gates. You know, I guess the gate
Speaker 1: for us would be like different ways of walking swimming gates. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so these would be swimming gates. The variations and gate
Speaker 1: could be controlled by how much the little robotic arms
Speaker 1: moved and and in what order. So should they all
Speaker 1: push in synchronization sort of like you'd often see with
Speaker 1: an octopus trying to get away real fast? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the way that it kind of pulsates, if that makes sense,
Speaker 1: or should they row in alternating patterns? There are some
Speaker 1: of the as you'll see in the video where it
Speaker 1: almost looks random. I don't think it is random, but they, uh,
Speaker 1: the tentacles, the little robotic tentacles just move at different times,
Speaker 1: more kind of the way that say, a spider walks.
Speaker 1: They also tested the difference between rigid arms and then
Speaker 1: these undulating, flexible arms that look more like a real
Speaker 1: octopus's limb. And one of the interesting things they discovered
Speaker 1: is that sculling doesn't necessarily produce the best fluid motion underwater,
Speaker 1: and some of the artificial gates made the robot move
Speaker 1: through the fluid environment much more smoothly, which makes you
Speaker 1: wonder why octopuses don't already do this. Now there could
Speaker 1: be some compensating drawback or some anatomical limitation that prevents
Speaker 1: them from doing it. I don't know, but I thought
Speaker 1: that was interesting. Yeah, yeah, that nature had not selected
Speaker 1: for the more efficient But yeah, but maybe there's something
Speaker 1: we don't know about this. Actually, maybe octopus is just preferred.
Speaker 1: Maybe they thought real hard about it and they all
Speaker 1: agreed that they just weren't going to that. It's a
Speaker 1: style thing, Yeah exactly. It's like, you know, is strutting
Speaker 1: really more efficient? No? But why wouldn't you strut? Okay,
Speaker 1: So we're working on robotic tentacles that can manipulate and grab,
Speaker 1: and we're working on robotic tentacles that can swim. So
Speaker 1: we're pretty much getting both of the parts together. Right,
Speaker 1: We're on the way to making a whole robot octopus.
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody is actually planning on doing that,
Speaker 1: but the elements are coming together. Yeah, but that is
Speaker 1: not all that is going on with tentacle inspired technology. No.
Speaker 1: In fact, you don't even have to look at the
Speaker 1: octopus scale. You could shrink it way down. Yes, we
Speaker 1: could be gripping things on a on a micro scale,
Speaker 1: which is uh just as terrifying actually. Um So, so
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about jellyfish tentacles. They're awful. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're wonderful from a biological standpoint, but they creep me
Speaker 1: right out. Um. From from a passive position drifting in
Speaker 1: the water, jellyfish tentacles can can automatically ensnare prey. They're
Speaker 1: they're like living fly paper. Okay, and they're they're technically plankton,
Speaker 1: which is a thing that I always forget until I
Speaker 1: learn it again. Um, they're just really really big plankton. Wait,
Speaker 1: hold on, jellyfish are jellyfish are planks? They're like plankton
Speaker 1: that got huge. Yeah, they are literally plankton that got huge.
Speaker 1: That is what they are. They're nervous systems basically don't exist.
Speaker 1: To quote you, that's awful. That's so awful. I typically
Speaker 1: love all animals. I kind of hate jellyfish. That's not fair,
Speaker 1: but I'm kidding. I don't actually hate jellyfish. They're they're wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful blobs of they're gorgeous. So their tentacles work like this, Uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're covered in thousands of specialized cells called nita blasts.
Speaker 1: That's spelled with the c N by the way um,
Speaker 1: which just reminds me of like cinabiite. Switch is great
Speaker 1: from you know hell razor actually pronounced I don't know,
Speaker 1: why would you have silences? Sorry latin um. So so
Speaker 1: these these night o blasts have these little hair like
Speaker 1: trigger follicles, okay um. And when something brushes up against
Speaker 1: the tentacle and hits one of these triggers on one
Speaker 1: of these cells, the cell discharges a coil of this
Speaker 1: kind of fleshy thread that can either wrap around or
Speaker 1: or even penetrate a living thing, like like a dart um.
Speaker 1: And those those living things are are usually their prey um,
Speaker 1: anything from from algae and smaller plankton um to two
Speaker 1: crustaceans and fish. In the case of larger jellyfish, UM,
Speaker 1: the threads also contain neurotoxins that paralyze that prey and
Speaker 1: sting the heck out of humans. So jellyfish. UM. Okay,
Speaker 1: now let's talk camp there, and this is coming back
Speaker 1: to tentacles, I promise, Just bear with me. One of
Speaker 1: the most dangerous things about cancerous cells is that they
Speaker 1: don't always stay put right. They can metastasize or break
Speaker 1: off from their home site and move through your bloodstream
Speaker 1: to other parts of your body, where they can cause
Speaker 1: additional cancerous growth and damage bad times. UM. So, so
Speaker 1: when a patient is receiving treatment for cancer, doctors might
Speaker 1: test their blood for cancer cells to determine the best
Speaker 1: course of therapies, you know, to to see if the
Speaker 1: cancer is starting to move around, and figure out how
Speaker 1: best to treat the patient. Um. It's still coming back
Speaker 1: to tentacles, I promise. UM. One way to find rogue
Speaker 1: cancer cells in a blood sample is to pour it
Speaker 1: through a device that's been coated on the inside with
Speaker 1: antibodies that are designed to um or that naturally stick
Speaker 1: to proteins found on the surface of cancer cells, but
Speaker 1: not on the surface of normal cells. So so the
Speaker 1: cancer cells will brush by these antibodies and stick to
Speaker 1: them clever. It is very clever. UM, But the antibodies
Speaker 1: don't have a really high success rate because they're so
Speaker 1: super tiny, just just a couple nanometers long, and um,
Speaker 1: these cells rushing past might be some like ten to
Speaker 1: thirty micrometers, like thousands of times bigger. Right, So it's
Speaker 1: like trying to catch a really big beach ball with
Speaker 1: the tip of a super glue tube. Um, It's it'll stick,
Speaker 1: but it's hard to get it to latch. But hey,
Speaker 1: remember how I said just a couple of seconds ago
Speaker 1: that jellyfish tentacles are super awesome passively capturing stuff. Inspired
Speaker 1: by this, a researcher by the name of Jeffrey Carp
Speaker 1: got a team together that designed tentacle like chains of
Speaker 1: d N A that stick to a protein found on
Speaker 1: cancer cells UM specific kinds of cancer cells. He was
Speaker 1: working with leukemia cells, lung cancer cells, and colon cancer
Speaker 1: cells specifically. UM. But uh yeah, yeah that this team
Speaker 1: created a device with a kind of edged flow surface
Speaker 1: UM and lined it with these long, tentacle like DNA
Speaker 1: chains um and they report that it can catch up
Speaker 1: to eight of target cells that are pushed through the device.
Speaker 1: UM and since different chains of DNA can catch different
Speaker 1: kinds of protein, the devices are hypothetically customizable for detecting
Speaker 1: different kinds of cancer cells. Oh it's it's so, it's
Speaker 1: so cool, it's and you know it is only for
Speaker 1: for blood testing purposes. Um. There were some reporters who
Speaker 1: I think kind of mistakenly got the idea that this
Speaker 1: could like go into your blood vessels and catch cancer
Speaker 1: cells as they were flowing through your body, and that
Speaker 1: that is not what this is for. If that ever happens,
Speaker 1: that would be pretty red But um, well, but I mean,
Speaker 1: detecting cancer is highly important to extremely important, especially early
Speaker 1: detection before these metastasized cells can start causing damage and
Speaker 1: other organs. So yeah, but let's talk about something even
Speaker 1: kind of squiak ear, which is uh, tentacle suckers. Okay,
Speaker 1: now that we've cured your cancer, we're going to look
Speaker 1: at cephalopod limbs again. Okay, So cephalopods, squid, octopuses, cuttlefish.
Speaker 1: If you've ever looked at a squid or octopus limb,
Speaker 1: you've probably seen them covered on the inside with big
Speaker 1: clusters of protruding concave rings. These are often called suction
Speaker 1: cups or suckers, and they held with gripping. So when
Speaker 1: a squid or an octopus wants to grab a delicious
Speaker 1: meal let's say it's a krill or you know, small fish,
Speaker 1: crustacean or chihuahua uh aqueous, and they want to shove
Speaker 1: it into the gaping beak of yummy nous, they latch
Speaker 1: onto the prey organism with the suction cups on their arms. Now,
Speaker 1: these suction cups are not the same on all right, right, Um,
Speaker 1: octopuses have very muscular section cups, which is how they function. Um.
Speaker 1: They have such complex muscular and nervous systems. Um, they've
Speaker 1: got separate controls for each arm. And and those arm
Speaker 1: controls can work independently of the brain. No, I think
Speaker 1: you messed up, you said, independently of the brain. Of
Speaker 1: the brain. Yes, a research if if a researcher cuts
Speaker 1: off an octopus's arm, which isn't very nice, but that's
Speaker 1: you know for science. Um uh and and tickles the arm,
Speaker 1: it will react the same way that an attached arm
Speaker 1: would react. Okay, weird creepy stuff. UM yeah, so so
Speaker 1: they have such complex muscular nervous systems that they can
Speaker 1: individually activate each section cup on their arms. Um. And
Speaker 1: there are a lot of these things, and each one
Speaker 1: is really kind of like a tiny mouth. UM. The
Speaker 1: lips of the suckers can grip small stuff and irregular
Speaker 1: surfaces and um and and the whole the sucker as
Speaker 1: a whole can suction to larger, flatter objects, which is
Speaker 1: pretty creepy, pretty awesome, and lets them hold and manipulate
Speaker 1: all kinds of things, like like they can open jars
Speaker 1: and carry shells around um or even steal a diver's
Speaker 1: camera if they want to. UM. So so. Inspired by this,
Speaker 1: a team led by robotic manipulation researcher Chad Kesson's of
Speaker 1: the University of Maryland, in collaboration with the U. S. Army,
Speaker 1: created robotic self sealing suction cups. Interesting. What the Army
Speaker 1: wants to do with robotic self sealing suction cups, I
Speaker 1: do not know, but they claim it's research and rescue.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's for that. That is what they say
Speaker 1: about everything that that. I love because it's cool, But
Speaker 1: then I also wonder deep down like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: what's for military? Um, But tell me about it. I'm
Speaker 1: I'll just I'll take them at their word. Yes, yes, um. So,
Speaker 1: so they place a bunch of these section cups on
Speaker 1: a robotic arm or tentacle kind of thing that has
Speaker 1: a vacuum pump inside, and each sucker sits closed by
Speaker 1: a little plug until the lip of the sucker comes
Speaker 1: into contact with an object, which causes the plug to
Speaker 1: release and the cup to attempt to um form a
Speaker 1: seal on the object. Okay um, And the vacuum pump
Speaker 1: is going all the time, keeping all the plugs in
Speaker 1: place in the cups that are closed, and providing suction
Speaker 1: power to all the cups that are open. UM. And
Speaker 1: this is really clever because it allows the maximum amount
Speaker 1: of suction power UH to get to those open cups
Speaker 1: and UM. Traditional section robots will waste some of that
Speaker 1: energy and and create possible leak points by leaving all
Speaker 1: the suckers open all the time. So this is a
Speaker 1: great workaround for that. That's pretty awesome. Yes, that is
Speaker 1: not the only biommetal suction cup technology that's based on
Speaker 1: cephalopod arms. For the other one, I think we should
Speaker 1: turn to squid. Okay, so on squid, you don't just
Speaker 1: have little suction cups. They're actually lined with rings of tiny,
Speaker 1: super sharp teeth. I even found a couple of pictures
Speaker 1: online of someone whose hands were marked up with lots
Speaker 1: of tiny little scratches, allegedly from working with squid, and
Speaker 1: it looked like they've been playing with a kitten. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh so cute. It was cute. It was like, let
Speaker 1: me hug you with my razor fingers. Don't worry. This
Speaker 1: does not mean they will cut giant scoops out of
Speaker 1: you like with a melon baller. The person behind these
Speaker 1: images was a cephalopod scientists named Donna Staff who in
Speaker 1: another blog post she describes the function of the sucker
Speaker 1: teeth as similar to that of vel crow. So it's
Speaker 1: not really for like slicing out huge chunks, but for
Speaker 1: gripping right right, kind of like like when we've talked
Speaker 1: about the follicles on getck feet and how they help you, well,
Speaker 1: not you, but gets gripped walls and stuff. Sure, except
Speaker 1: with more teeth, more teeth. Anyway, these little suckers can
Speaker 1: they inspire technology to you? Bet? There was a June
Speaker 1: nine publication in the journal a CS Nano called nano
Speaker 1: confined b sheets or that's beta sheets actually mechanically reinforce
Speaker 1: the supra biomolecular network of robust squid sucker ring teeth.
Speaker 1: What on Earth does that mean? There's a good short
Speaker 1: ride up on the American Chemical Society press page, and
Speaker 1: they basically explained that through previous research, the authors had
Speaker 1: found out that the sucker ring teeth, those little tiny
Speaker 1: teeth we were just describing, which they abbreviate s RT,
Speaker 1: we're not like the teeth or bone of many other animals,
Speaker 1: which have to incorporate minerals or external elements, and instead,
Speaker 1: the sucker ring teeth are made completely out of proteins alone.
Speaker 1: And in this paper they identified a bunch of the
Speaker 1: s r T proteins. There were thirty seven in addition
Speaker 1: to one they had already discovered from one species of
Speaker 1: cuttlefish and two species of squid. And they also studied
Speaker 1: the structure of those proteins and found they presented as
Speaker 1: these beta sheets, which is a type of protein structure,
Speaker 1: and the researchers suggested that this stuff could be synthesized
Speaker 1: to create materials that are both strong and malleable, which
Speaker 1: could be really useful in say, biomedical scenarios, as like
Speaker 1: scaffolding to grow tissues on, for example, or just simply
Speaker 1: as an alternative to petroleum based packaging. It's just strong,
Speaker 1: malleable stuff. We could use it for all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Circular razor teeth to the future. Yes, they are saving
Speaker 1: our planet excellent. So there are plenty more wonderful technically
Speaker 1: technology things out there for you to go read about. Yes,
Speaker 1: and maybe we will do another episode about this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff in the future and that incredible future filled
Speaker 1: with tiny sucker teeth. Yes, well do you want to do?
Speaker 1: You want to give in the closing moments of our
Speaker 1: podcast your little rant about why people shouldn't be mean
Speaker 1: to octopuses. Oh, they're smarter than your dog, like like
Speaker 1: your dog, not not just your dog, Joe, but most dogs.
Speaker 1: They're they're just gentle, beautiful creatures. They there. They don't
Speaker 1: really like hanging out like they just sort of want
Speaker 1: to hide and then eat stuff. And that's what I
Speaker 1: like doing. So I really think that you should not
Speaker 1: eat octopuses and you should be really nice to them
Speaker 1: all the time. Thank you. Um, if you have anything
Speaker 1: to say to us. You can get in touch with us.
Speaker 1: You can email us at f W Thinking at how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Google Plus, where our handle is submiteration of FW thinking.
Speaker 1: I'm have complete faith in your alities to find us,
Speaker 1: and you can also, of course find this podcast and
Speaker 1: more stuff on our website, which is FW thinking dot
Speaker 1: com and we hope to hear from you. Either way,
Speaker 1: you will hear from us very soon. For more on
Speaker 1: this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking
Speaker 1: dot com, brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places