Octopus-Inspired Surgical Arm is Filled With … Coffee?

Photo credit: BBC News

The field of modern medicine keeps making impressive strives. They’ve already developed glass eyes to correct cataracts in fish and now octopus tentacles are inspiring even more advancements.

Engineers in Italy have created a robotic arm to improve surgeries. This robotic tentacle can bend, stretch, and switch between being flexible and rigid as needed.

Inflatable compartments drive the movement, and it becomes stiff thanks to a central tube filled with … coffee.

If this new technology is widely adopted, it can make many procedures less invasive and the incisions smaller.

“The human body represents a highly challenging and non-structured environment, where the capabilities of the octopus can provide several advantages with respect to traditional surgical tools,” said lead author Tommaso Ranzani, from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa.

“The concept has a great deal of potential and the implementation is clever,” commented Ravi Vaidyanathan, a senior lecturer in bio-mechatronics at Imperial College in London.

Read more from BBC News.