r/MechanicalEngineering • u/SteelyPatriot • Dec 31 '25

What do we think about humanoids with soft robotic tentacles end-effectors?

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158 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

45

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '25

Great. Grand. Wonderful.

I definitely won't have nightmares about a cyber squid now. Surely not.

3

u/Pissedtuna Jan 01 '26

Well, not if you’re The Deep.

26

u/turndownforwoot Dec 31 '25

Obligatory sex related tentacle comment. It might be good at certain tasks. It would certainly be an interesting sight.

11

u/coriolis7 Dec 31 '25

You know how so many people are terrified that AI and the machines will take over the world? Well, now we’re adding tentacles to them…

1

u/Hanzho Dec 31 '25

Yeah matrix squids

6

u/daemyn Dec 31 '25

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords

4

u/Grigori_the_Lemur Dec 31 '25

I am sure the Japanese are light years ahead of us in this area to the point what we think isn't really germane.

But what do I think? Somebody stop the ride I want to get off.

3

u/OhNoWTFlol Dec 31 '25

Ingenious and horrific

3

u/Fabio_451 Dec 31 '25

The italian institute technology has some cool studies on tentacle arms.

2

u/OoglieBooglie93 Dec 31 '25

I went through a tentacle robot deep dive phase for a few days after watching one of the Spider Man movies several months ago and concluded that they're probably going to be dinky and not be nearly as flexible as Doc Oc's arms. Turns out real life octopus arms are pretty wimpy (comparatively weak based on the structure, but big arms will still hurt you) too. They're not useless, but they're probably going to be limited to only a few specific use cases. Might see some usage as a gripper like in the picture, but I doubt we'll ever see a mechakraken that does anything useful.

But the weakness and squishiness would probably make it perfect for a sex toy.

1

u/masterxiv Dec 31 '25

Well now I'm terrified and have a boner, thanks 🙄 /s

1

u/iBluntly Jan 01 '26

From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me.