The Octopus-Inspired OCTOID Is a Soft Robot That Can Move, Grab, and Even Change Color

A team of researchers from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Jeonbuk National University, and the University of Pennsylvania have built a soft robot that is designed to move like an octopus — and which copies its camouflaging talents, too.

"Through this research, we have secured materials for soft robots that can be applied to various fields, including autonomous adaptive robots, military camouflage systems, marine exploration robots, and medical micro-robots," says Dae-Yoon Kim, KIST Principal researcher, and co-senior author on the paper. "We aim to expand this technology into the development of intelligent soft machines, such as self-aware, reflexive, and learning-based soft robots."

The machine built by the team, OCTOID, was inspired by the ability of the octopus to change color for camouflage and then to move and hunt prey by transforming the shape of their soft bodies — skills the robotic equivalent has copied, though in its current prototype form the works is split across multiple task-specific limbs.

The robot is built using photonic crystal polymers as the core material, arranged in a helical molecular structure. The result is a robot that is soft and flexible, allowing for ease of movement, but is also able to change color — stretching and expanding upon the application of an electrical signal in order to shift though shades of blue to green and finally to red.

"By uniting camouflaging, moving, and grabbing functions into a single modular platform, OCTOID demonstrates how tunable chiropticity and elasticity in soft materials can be harnessed for multifunctional and adaptive robotics," the team concludes. "Beyond mimicking biological strategies of octopuses, this integration underscores a path toward programmable soft robotic systems with broad potential in dynamic camouflage, autonomous manipulation, and multifunctional optomechanical devices."

The team's work has been published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials under open-access terms.