[New Scientist via io9]

But what's this "soft robot" thing, you ask? Easy. It's your traditional autonomous robot, with limbs that bend, flex and fit into a variety of places, a la our aquatic friend the octopus. Like the cephalopod, there will also be no hard surfaces or bones, meaning—in theory—this robot will be able to survey the ocean floor with the dexterity as the octopi.

You can see how these limbs work in the video (short commercial to start), as well as how scientists are trying to recreate this organic feat in something artificial as part of a multi-million dollar research effort to explore the world's oceans.

Aside from looking like a Pinocchio dildo, the artificial soft robot limb does sort of resemble an octopus. Robots have long been portrayed as humanoid, clunky, or at the least very mechanical in nature. If soft robotics pans out, it could change that dynamic pretty substantially.

[New Scientist]

Macquarie University's Renata Pronk has discovered that the animals, despite probably not even seeing color, were much more interested in HDTV than in SD, though not for the reasons you might think. The preference, Pronk thinks, comes down to hertz, not pixels. Because of a quirk of their sense of sight, Octopuses may see SDTV as a series of jerky still images, needing the 50/60hz of an HDTV to get the fluid effect that humans enjoy in both cases.

With Christmas fast approaching, this could be the evidence you need to convince a stubborn friend or loved one to finally make the switch. A suggestion: look them in the eyes and slowly, earnestly say, "You're not an octopus. You're better than an octopus." You can't go wrong with that kind of flattery. [Sydney Morning Herald via Slashdot]

This particular model is sold out, but hit the jump to see more octopus/tentacle chandeliers.

$10,000

$8,500

Collect all three. [gallery via boingboing]

You know who else was an Octopussy? That Roger Moore. [product via shinyshiny]

The only thing we'd be concerned about (other than the fact that octopuses have eight legs and this has like twelve) is the bottles slipping through the hooks and onto our feet. That's happened enough already with our clumsy hands that we don't feel like repeating them with this. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Uptoyoutoronto (look under bath section) via Nerd Approved]

This Octarm makes us think stuff like Dr. Octopus's arms and Japanese Tentacle Hentai are just a few more product revisions away. The octopus like arm can grasp and carry various objects in real world situations without mangling or dropping them. Watch and listen to the NPR-like voice make a bad-ass robot seem like your college 8am calculus lecture.

Robotic tentacles get to grips with tricky objects [New Scientist via Zero Sign]