A recent University of Iowa study features an underwater vehicle that was given increased maneuverability by modeling its limbs similar to that of an octopus, making it easier to navigate difficult underwater terrain and advancing exploration.
About 73 percent of the seafloor is still unmapped according to NOAA Ocean Exploration, a number inspiring Caterina Lamuta, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, to work toward making underwater exploration more efficient.
“The octopus has this skin that can change texture, it can be very smooth if it’s on sand, but it can also be very rough if it’s on a rough rock,” Lamuta said. “In order to change this roughness, the octopus uses the papilla muscle. So we took inspiration from this muscle.”
In the study, Lamuta and the rest of the team found that when outfitted with an underwater wing, or a hydrofoil, with tiny coils that can unroll when powered, the coils change how water moves around the entire vehicle.
The morphed movement of water translates to less drag, more lift, and easier movement all around, a fact Lamuta said she hopes will make underwater exploration easier in difficult terrain.
Lamuta estimates current technology is one year away from being able to implement the design into small underwater vehicles such as unmanned drones. For larger vehicles, she estimates it will take up to three years.
“This is the beginning of this technology, so we have to figure out how scalable it is,” she said. “We have to understand how many of these artificial muscles we can place on the vehicle without having to increase the weight too much.”
While practical implementation of the design is under works, Lamuta takes pride in the progress of the study so far, pride directed especially towards Rabiu Mamman, a Ph.D student in mechanical engineering at UI and the paper’s first author.
The study won first place in the graduate student mechanical engineering category at UI’s Research Open House 2025, an annual event where students and faculty showcase their research to the public.
“[The award] gave me a feeling of respite,” Mamman said. “I was happy, and it means that we are doing what is right, that our research is appealing to the broader engineering community. It’s also served as motivation for me to keep doing well and making my professor proud.”
RELATED: UI gene therapy aims to develop alternatives to skull surgery for babies
Lamuta emphasized that two large research steps remain in making the hydrofoil’s design practical, the first of which is durability. Currently, there is no sound method for attaching the device to the hull of a ship. Lamuat also said she believes more research must be put into the device’s energy efficiency.
“Saving something in terms of power will save you something in terms of weight,” she said. “In order to provide power, you need to use batteries or power supplies. So that’s why having some smart material that can convert waves into electrical energy is a nice option.”
Looking even further ahead than implementing the hydrofoil design on the hulls of ships, Mamman hopes the design can fold into an entire octopus robot project.
“By the time we are done with assembling everything, we hope to have this whole robotic octopus that can go underwater and perform simple exploration operations in complex territory,” he said.
Looking back at the octopus modeled pitch of the whole study, Lamuta still feels a great deal of fascination.
“Getting inspiration from animals of nature is something very cool that humans always try to do,” she said. “Smart materials, like the one we make in our labs, like artificial muscles, it’s something new, and thanks to this development in advanced materials, we are actually able to emulate a lot of things that we see in nature.”