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Most of today’s robots only function well in highly structured environments, like factory assembly lines. But thanks to some clever biomimicry, we might soon be seeing robots with a more flexible approach. To build their squishy aquatic robots, a team of researchers in Italy drew inspiration from the octopus. The animal’s movements don’t require a lot of brainpower. Rather than relying on top-down instructions from the central nervous system, many of an octopus’s movements happen almost spontaneously–the result of the physical interplay between the animal’s body and its surrounding environment. By utilizing this strategy, called embodied intelligence, the team created soft robots that could grasp objects, crawl along the seafloor, and even swim–with a lot less computing power than you might imagine.
