Shades of the 1968 Minsky tentacle arm: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuXQPdd0hjI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuXQPdd0hjI</a><p>It had 12 joints, though each had a hydraulic actuator rather than a tendon mechanism (i.e. not three muscles lke this model). But as an undergraduate he had fiddled with the actuation of arthropod joints and claws: <a href="https://cyberneticzoo.com/underwater-robotics/1968-minsky-bennett-arm-marvin-minsky-and-bill-bennett-american/" rel="nofollow">https://cyberneticzoo.com/underwater-robotics/1968-minsky-be...</a>
> why does it have to have so many other muscles, and when are those used?<p>Elephants aren't just controlling the direction of the trunk, but the diameter of the interior tube in several "chambers" up and down, tho. They pump water, they must be.<p>Tapir tools are worth study for much the same reasons. Harder to write a research grant proposal there.
Snake robots aren't that hard to make. The Tesla auto charger demo was a good idea.[1] People thought it was creepy, but it's much simpler mechanically than other ways of doing the same thing.<p>The snake part is just disks with cables through them. The motors are all in the base. So the part that might get damaged can be made easily replaceable.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWXIZMtxB6Q" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWXIZMtxB6Q</a>
> He says that the important result is in “reducing the biological complexity to three degrees of freedom.”<p>I was expecting that someone would reference the famous von Neumann quote.