So far, Dr Laschi's robot is not so much an octopus as a monopus, but she plans to correct this over the next two years by adding seven more arms and a control system that can co-ordinate them all.
"Because the honey bee brain is smaller and more accessible than any vertebrate brain, we hope to eventually be able to produce an accurate and complete model that we can test within a flying robot, " said Dr Marshall.
Dr Stevens's technique works by employing a robot to create and handle the droplets in which the crystals grow and thus to do so faster than was previously possible.
Dr Paxton has eschewed sonar detectors, underwater cameras and robot submarines in favour of an entirely different method of detection: statistics.
Dr Minguez is also part of a group developing a robot arm that could help patients reach for a drink or feed themselves.
Dr Rao's team began by programming a humanoid robot with simple behaviours which users could then select with a wearable electroencephalogram (EEG) cap that picked up their brain activity.
Dr Chris Melhuish and his Bristol-based team hope the robot, called EcoBot II, will one day be sent into zones too dangerous for humans, potentially proving invaluable in military, security and industrial areas.
The wing-waving robot lasted for two months but was regularly attacked, said Dr Anderson.
However, this requires programming the robot with a predefined set of very basic behaviours, an approach which Dr Rao ultimately found to be very limiting.
With this in mind Dr Hover and Mr Englot, along with a team of colleagues, used a robot known as the Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (HAUV), which was developed at MIT and has since been commercialised by a company called Bluefin Robotics.
To emulate this kind of behaviour - albeit in a more simplistic fashion - Dr Rao and his team are developing a hierarchical brain-computer interface for controlling the robot.
Dr Patrick Kluger, a spinal injury expert who works at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, said the robot was one of several techniques currently being developed.
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