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- All Subjects: Foldable
- All Subjects: Octopus
- Creators: Marvi, Hamid
- Creators: Downey, Matthew Evan
Chapter 1: Functional Specialization and Arm Length in Octopus bimaculoides<br/>Although studies are limited, there is some evidence that octopuses use their arms for specialized functions. For example, in Octopus maya and O. vulgaris, the anterior arms are utilized more frequently for grasping and exploring (Lee, 1992; Byrne et al., 2006a), while posterior arms are more frequently utilized for crawling in O. vulgaris (Levy et al., 2015). In addition, O. vulgaris uses favored arms when retrieving food and making contact with a T-maze as dictated by their lateralized vision (Byrne, 2006b). O. vulgaris also demonstrates a preference for anterior arms when retrieving food from a Y-maze (Gutnick et. al. 2020). In Octopus bimaculoides bending and elongation were more frequent in anterior arms than posterior arms during reaching and grasping tasks, and right arms displayed deformation more frequently than left arms, with the exception of the hectocotylus (R3) in males (Kennedy et. al. 2020). Given these observed functional differences, the goal of this study was to determine if morphological differences exist between different octopus arm identities, coded as L1-L4 and R1-R4. In particular, the relationship between arm length and arm identity was analyzed statistically. The dataset included 111 intact arms from 22 wild-caught specimens of O. bimaculoides (11 male and 11 female). Simple linear regressions and an analysis of covariance were performed to test the relationship between arm length and a number of factors, including body mass, sex, anterior versus posterior location, and left versus the right side. Mass had a significant linear relationship with arm length and a one-way ANOVA demonstrated that arm identity is significantly correlated with arm length. Moreover, an analysis of covariance demonstrated that independent of mass, arm identity has a significant linear relationship with arm length. Despite an overall appearance of bilateral symmetry, arms of different identities do not have statistically equivalent lengths in O. bimaculoides. Furthermore, differences in arm length do not appear to be related to sex, anterior versus posterior location, or left or right side. These results call into question the existing practice of treating all arms as equivalent by either using a single-arm measurement as representative of all eight or calculating an average length and suggest that morphological analyses of specific arm identities may be more informative.<br/><br/>Chapter 2: Predicting and Analyzing Octopus bimaculoides Sensitivity to Global Anesthetic<br/>Although global anesthetic is widely used in human and veterinary medicine the mechanism and impact of global anesthetic is relatively poorly comprehended, even in well-studied mammalian models. Invertebrate anesthetic is even less understood. In order to evaluate factors that impact anesthetic effectiveness analyses were conducted on 22 wild-caught specimens of Octopus bimaculoides during 72 anesthetic events.Three machine learning models: regression tree, random forest, and generalized additive model were utilized to make predictions of the concentration of anesthetic (percent ethanol by volume) from 11 features and to determine feature importance in making those predictions. The fit of each model was analyzed on three criteria: correlation coefficient, mean squared error, and relative error. Feature importance was determined in a model-specific manner. Predictions from the best performing model, random forest, have a .82 correlation coefficient with experimental values. Feature importance suggests that temperature on arrival and cohabitation factors strongly influence predictions for anesthesia concentration. This likely indicates the transportation process was incurring stress on the animals and that cohabitation was also stressful for the typically solitary O. bimaculoides. This long-term stress could lead to a decline in the animal’s well-being and a lower necessary ethanol concentration (Horvath et al., 2013). This analysis provides information to improve the care of octopus in laboratory settings and furthers the understanding of the effects of global anesthetic in invertebrates, particularly one with a distributed nervous system.
The researchers build a drone with a grasping mechanism to wrap around branches to perch. The design process and methodology are discussed along with the software and hardware configuration. The researchers explain the influences on the design and the possibilities for what it could inspire.
First, a literature review of the behavioral rules of different types of insect colonies and the resulting structural patterns over the course of excavation was conducted. After identifying pertinent excavation laws, three different finite state machines were generated that relate to construction, search and rescue operations, and extraterrestrial exploration. After analyzing these finite state machines, it became apparent that they all shared a common controller. Then, agent-based NetLogo software was used to simulate a swarm of agents that run this controller, and a model for excavating behaviors and patterns was fit to the simulation data. This model predicts the tunnel shapes formed in the simulation as a function of the swarm size and a time delay, called the critical waiting period, in one of the state transitions. Thus, by controlling the individual agents' behavior, it was possible to control the structural outcomes of collective excavation in simulation.
To create an experimental testbed that could be used to physically implement the controller, a small foldable robotic platform was developed, and it's capabilities were tested in granular media. In order to characterize the granular media, force experiments were conducted and parameters were measured for resistive forces during an excavation cycle. The final experiment verified the robot's ability to engage in excavation and deposition, and to determine whether or not to begin the critical waiting period. This testbed can be expanded with multiple robots to conduct small-scale experiments on collective excavation, such as further exploring the effects of the critical waiting period on the resulting excavation pattern. In addition, investigating other factors like tuning digging efficiency or deposition proximity could help to transition the proposed bio-inspired swarm excavation controllers to implementation in real-world applications.