Image caption
A network of channels sits at the core of the robot (black bar is 2mm long)
The circuit sets up an alternating movement, whereby balloon-like chambers are inflated inside four limbs at a time.
The octobot raises four legs and lowers the other four, then swaps. It is a simple demonstration but an important one.
"Right now he's kind of flopping back and forth, but it'd be nice to create soft robots that know when they're interacting with their environment - that have more complicated modes of autonomous functionality," Mr Truby said.
And why make the prototype an octopus? As a tribute, apparently. The animal is devoid of a skeleton but remarkably strong and capable of a baffling variety of movement - so has been a tremendous model for the soft robotics community.
"The octopus itself does not move this way, it is not powered this way," Mr Truby explained.
"We're not necessarily taking inspiration from the octopus itself, but we thought that for... our first embodiment of an entirely soft robot, it needed to have the form of an octopus.