The team at Bristol Robotics Laboratory researched the structures of octopus biological suckers, which possess excellent adaptive suction abilities allowing them to anchor to rocks.
In their study, published in the journal PNAS today, the researchers demonstrate how they were able to create a multi-layer soft structure and an artificial fluidic system to mimic the musculature and mucus structures of biological suckers.
Suction is a highly evolved biological adhesion strategy for soft-bodied organisms to achieve strong grasping on various objects. Biological suckers can adaptively attach to dry complex surfaces like rocks and shells, which are very challenging for current artificial suction cups. The researchers believe that the combination of mechanical conformation and liquid seal is the secret behind the adaptive suction of biological organisms.
Lead author Tianqi Yue stated: “The most important development is that we successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of combining mechanical conformation and liquid seal to improve suction adaptability on complex surfaces. This may explain how biological organisms achieve adaptive suction.”
Their multi-scale suction mechanism combines mechanical conformation and regulated water seal to achieve long suction longevity on diverse surfaces with minimal overflow.
Tianqi added: “We believe the presented multi-scale adaptive suction mechanism is a powerful new strategy that could be crucial in the development of versatile soft adhesion. Natural organisms with suckers have been able to maintain superb adaptive suction on complex surfaces without the need for noisy and energy-wasting air pumps.”
The team’s findings have potential for industrial applications, such as creating a next-generation robotic gripper for grasping irregular objects. They plan to enhance the suction cup by embedding sensors to regulate its behavior.
Paper: ‘Bioinspired multiscale adaptive suction on complex dry surfaces enhanced by regulated water secretion’ by Tianqi Yue, Weiyong Si, Alex Keller, Chenguang Yang, Hermes Bloomfield-Gadêlha, and Jonathan Rossiter in PNAS.
