Underwater Bipedal Locomotion by Octopuses in Disguise

@article{Huffard2005UnderwaterBL,
  title={Underwater Bipedal Locomotion by Octopuses in Disguise},
  author={Christine L. Huffard and Farnis B. Boneka and Robert J. Full},
  journal={Science},
  year={2005},
  volume={307},
  pages={1927 - 1927}
}
Here we report bipedal movement with a hydrostatic skeleton. Two species of octopus walk on two alternating arms using a rolling gait and appear to use the remaining six arms for camouflage. Octopus marginatus resembles a coconut, and Octopus (Abdopus) aculeatus, a clump of floating algae. Using underwater video, we analyzed the kinematics of their strides. Each arm was on the sand for more than half of the stride, qualifying this behavior as a form of walking. 
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71 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
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Background Citations
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Methods Citations
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71 Citations

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Underwater robots adopt octopus bipedal locomotion can be better on uneven terrain, and in the comparison of time to restore stability, it was shown the higher stiffness decrease coefficient made the movement more stable.

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The investigation started from slow speed gaits, such as the crawling locomotion of octopuses, and was followed by faster gaits such as bipedal walking and hopping, to envisage that this novel locomotion can be exploited to increase the mobility of underwater robots in the benthic realm.

Locomotion by Abdopus aculeatus (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae): walking the line between primary and secondary defenses

  • C. Huffard
  • Biology
    Journal of Experimental Biology
  • 2006
SUMMARY Speeds and variation in body form during crawling, bipedal walking, swimming and jetting by the shallow-water octopus Abdopus aculeatus were compared to explore possible interactions between…

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The effect of compliance on robustness of these motions to environmental variations is analyzed and the implications of the results to the motor control of cephalopods and to the development of control strategies for soft robotic systems are commented on.

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An underwater bipedal walking soft robot based on coconut octopus was designed, and a machine vision algorithm was used to extract the motion information for analysis, which makes an underwater soft robot more suitable for moving on uneven ground.

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Studies will be summarized to show that the amazing behavioral motor abilities of the octopus are achieved through a special embodied organization of its flexible body, unusual morpholo­ gy, and a unique central and peripheral distribution of its extremely large nervous system.

Octopus-inspired multi-arm robotic swimming

This work investigates the propulsive capabilities of a multi-arm robotic system under various swimming gaits, namely patterns of arm coordination, which achieve the generation of forward, as well as backward, propulsion and turning, and a lumped-element model of the robotic swimmer was used.
...

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