Octopus-Inspired Camouflage for Soft Robotics

There are many reasons to admire the octopus, including its ability to instantly pop up tiny protrusions of various shapes from its skin to match the texture of its background. This technique, combined with other camouflage tricks such as changing its color, allow an octopus to blend into to almost anything--even boats. Those protrusions, called dermal papillae, were the bio-inspiration behind a new elastic material that can morph into various shapes, and could provide a shape-shifting surface for soft robots. Researchers from Cornell University in New York and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts decided to build a material based on muscle groups that control papillae along the surface of an octopus tentacle. The material consists of a fiber mesh that simulates an octopus's erector muscles, which contract to squeeze a protrusion into shape.