Moving on from Robot Hands, US researchers have developed an interesting new technology known as 'Octarms'. These tentacle-like attachments seem to resemble an octopus’s limb or an elephant’s trunk and can grasp and grapple with a wide variety of objects. These tentacles can be attached to current robots to perform a much wider range of actions than the previous method of robotic grasping (mechanical jaws) ever could. “Just like a real tentacle, an Octarm simply wraps itself around an object in order to manoeuvre it. This allows it to grasp objects of various sizes and shapes and could let robots deal with unpredictable real-world situations, the researchers say.”