Robots could use living invertebrates as grippers to help them pick up awkward objects or grasp things underwater.
“We don’t mean it as a replacement for robotics, but as a kind of new direction or new way to do both biology and robotics,” says Josephine Galipon at Tohoku University in Japan.
But others have questioned how useful or ethical this approach is.
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Researchers have previously experimented with using live insects to control entire robots or even using whole dead spiders as robotic grippers.
Galipon and her colleagues have now made grippers using pill bugs – a kind of woodlouse – and chitons – marine molluscs that can stick firmly to rocks, like a limpet.
The team made custom 3D-printed housings for both organisms and attached them to a robot arm. The pill bugs picked up and rotated a piece of cotton wool for around 2 minutes before releasing it. The chitons picked up cork, wood and plastic cylinders underwater, but didn’t easily release the objects.
