This adorable robot octopus is powered by farts

The latest addition to a growing menagerie of octopus-robots has a lot going for it: It’s small, completely squishy, it doesn’t need a battery — and it farts.

The adorable palm-sized robot is the work of a team of engineers from Harvard University. They created our flatulent friend by pouring liquid silicone into an octopus-shaped mold and 3D printing legs. A soft, central controller in the bot’s body shunts hydrogen peroxide fuel through reaction chambers that convert the liquid to oxygen gas and water vapor. The gas inflates the legs through tiny channels running from the body and makes them wiggle — in a minimally alarming way, which is a first for the field of octobots. But that gas has to go somewhere when it’s done making the...