Investigating Octopus arm sensory receptors

The octopus have eight arms, baring each a large number of suckers, with theoretically infinite degrees of freedom and control them through a rather complex nervous system distributed between the central and the elaborated peripheral nervous system of the arm. Octopuses are very tactile animals and rely mostly on what is described as a contact-based chemo sensation [4] of their suckers. Like the octopus, today’s soft robots have a large number of degrees of freedom. A contact-based interaction is similarly used in soft-robotics to reduce the complexity of controlling a large number of degrees of freedom but challenges for robotics include the mechanics and sensing required to build such systems. Here we propose to investigate 1) the presence, structure and innervation pathway of the muscle proprioception in the octopus arm; 2) the structure and organization of mechano and chemical receptors of the octopus arm sucker.

章鱼拥有八条腕足，每条腕足上分布着大量吸盘，理论上具备无限多的自由度，并通过一套极为复杂的神经系统实现对腕足的控制——该神经系统既包含中枢部分，也包含腕足处发育完善的外周神经系统。章鱼属于高度触觉敏感的动物，其感知主要依赖于吸盘所介导的接触式化学感受[4]。与章鱼类似，当前的软体机器人同样拥有大量自由度。软体机器人领域同样采用接触式交互策略，以降低大量自由度的控制复杂度，但该领域仍面临构建此类系统所需的力学与感知相关技术挑战。本研究拟开展两项探究：1）章鱼腕足肌肉本体感受器的存在性、结构及其神经支配通路；2）章鱼腕足吸盘的机械感受器与化学感受器的结构与组织形式。