Designs for a Living Tentacle

Approaches to building a robotic tentacle

The EU Octopus Project Video

I'd like to be able to build a kit version of the above, which works out of water, and has quite a bit of flexibility, for less than £100 to buy as a kit. Question is, how?

Well Google solves all problems. See this thrillingly beautiful Arduino based Octopus tentacle by J Hodge here. Its even already on Thingiverse here. 

The 3D printed parts have been designed by J Hodgie. I'm extremely impressed. I think its the kind of thing that we can definitely modify and add sensors to. The principle is as I envisaged and discussed earlier with Chris Jack, springs to reform, and wires to deform.

Here is another example of a handmade tentacle (without a large EU project :)), this time a pneumatic one by Matthew Borgatti. 

Not sure how to do the pneumatics parts cheaply with arduino. Also the sensors will have to be made on the surface somehow. More details here. 

This more engineered solution doesn't seem quite so nice in comparison. Festo is a company that has used the same principles. It uses the classic 'fish tail' gripper system, and the octopus arm system to hold that gripper.

You can see the skeleton in the middle, and the wires that pull and thus deform the skeleton, same principle as with all the designs basically.

The same principle is seem in many designs for example see the video here by Misguided, again available on Thingiverse here.

Another similar principle, more elegant for arduino comes under animatronic tentacles see here for the Instructables site instructions. 

It uses the same principle of wires, this time two wires pulling laterally and rostro-caudally.

ALL of these projects do NOT attempt closed-loop control. It is amazing. Why not stick some sensors on the bloody tentacle? Thats precisely what we're going to do with the living tentacle.