MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Robots used for search-and-rescue operations need to be able to wriggle through narrow cracks and crevices. A group of researchers has turned to a natural contortionist for inspiration - the octopus. Here is science reporter Ari Daniel.
ARI DANIEL, BYLINE: After a disaster like an earthquake or a train crash, robots can be deployed in unpredictable physical environments to do critical lifesaving work.
WENCI XIN: First of all, try to find out where are the survivors, and then maybe after they reach the spaces that the peoples are, they can pass the water or the food to the survivors.
DANIEL: But four-legged robots and robots with wheels can have a hard time fitting into tight spaces to conduct these operations, says roboticist Wenci Xin, now at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology. Even undulating, snake-like robots have their shortcomings.
XIN: Even with this kind of long cylinder shape, a robot still has the limited functionalities to do the tasks.
DANIEL: Because they're too narrow to hold emergency supplies or larger mechanical components and sensors, which is why Xin and his colleagues, like biologist Tamar Gutnick of the Vienna Zoo, turned to the octopus.
TAMAR GUTNICK: People are fascinated by the escape-artist aspect of octopuses.
DANIEL: Aside from a rigid capsule around the brain and a small hard beak used for eating, the octopus' body is soft and pliable.
GUTNICK: We know that they can squeeze through all these spaces, but nobody's actually looked at how they do this. So what we did was take octopuses and systematically make them go through different-sized holes.
DANIEL: The researchers enrolled a few common octopuses and several Mayan octopuses, each one the size of an apple, in an experiment at a public aquarium in Vienna. The team cut a hole in a clear] acrylic partition that slid into the tank and then analyzed the video footage of what the animals did next.
GUTNICK: Once they find a hole, they often just naturally will try and go through it.
DANIEL: First, the octopus reached a single arm through the hole to explore the other side. After determining the coast was clear, says Wenci Xin...
XIN: They usually move three to five arms to the other side.
DANIEL: If the hole was big enough, the octopus would then use those arms to pull the rest of its body through by pressing back against the partition.
GUTNICK: This is a sequence of actions that is consistent.
DANIEL: If the opening was smaller than the distance between the animal's eyes, Mayan octopuses wouldn't even attempt to slip through. The common octopus, though - it stuffed all eight of its arms into the hole before actively compressing its body cavity, along with its internal organs, to squeeze on through.
GUTNICK: It's very strange looking.
DANIEL: Tamar Gutnick says the octopuses appear to have a sense of their shifting size and shape and space. In terms of what comes next, Wenci Xin is trying to build a robot that mimics the behavior of the octopuses, which is no easy feat.
XIN: So we are thinking about whether we can bring this capability to the robots so that they can go through those kind of spaces that are really hard to reach.
DANIEL: Which might also include explorations of sunken shipwrecks - these results are published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Mishu Duduta wasn't involved in the research. He's an engineer at the University of Connecticut who builds robots inspired by living things.
MISHU DUDUTA: Consistently, all those octopi would reach and then pull themselves through, and that kind of has big implications for how we think of robots for search and rescue.
DANIEL: Duduta says designing a robot that pushes versus pulls has been a long-standing debate. The octopus results strengthen the case for pulling. In addition...
DUDUTA: We usually want to send robots to do dangerous work, dull work or dirty work.
DANIEL: The octopuses, he says, point the way toward another kind of work - delicate. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel.
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