Imagine this wrapping around your ankle.
Called the OctopusGripper (presumably because 'Tentaclutch' was already taken), this
new kind of robotic grabber has been developed by German company Festo. It is a fully flexible appendage, quite like your tongue, without any hard structures within. And our future robotic overlords will use them to strangle us.The OctopusGripper has been mounted on the end of what Festo call the BionicMotionRobot, itself modelled after an elephant's trunk, using pneumatic pressure on the inside to flex and bend. Sure, we can imagine Octopuses being happy to aid in the end of humanity, but elephants? We thought we had something? Oh God, they're mad about all that ivory poaching, aren't they?
Still, two great (if creepy) innovations from Festo.
