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The octopus arm and its arsenal of suckers enable an extreme range of sensory and motor capabilities, all within an appendage that has unparalleled flexibility and strength. Octopus appendages perform many functions that humans wish to emulate for applications in society, industry, medicine, and defense. A key biological challenge is to unravel the mechanisms of neural sensing and control of an individual arm and its coordination with adjacent arms.

Recently, the U.S. Department of Defense/Office of Naval Research awarded a three-year grant to MBL Senior Scientist Roger Hanlon (principal investigator) to illuminate the mechanisms of sensorimotor control of octopus arms. Co-PIs on the grant are former MBL co-director of University of Chicago and of University of Minnesota/MBL Whitman Center. Joining Hanlon to work on the research in the ǧ����Ƶ Bell Center are Kendra Buresch and Stephen Senft.

This research can have significant applications, such as the design of soft, flexible, strong robotic arms that can locomote, grasp/release, and sense chemicals and physical materials. Soft robotic arms could enable, for example, search-and-rescue medicine delivery to people in collapsed buildings. When miniaturized, soft, flexible devices for medical diagnosis or treatment could be deployed, such as in the GI tract and the vascular system.