Bioinspired cross-medium wall-climbing robot with high-performance adhesion and contact adaptability.

ABSTRACT: Wall-climbing robots (WCRs) using numerous attachment/grasping mechanisms replace humans in executing repetitive or challenging tasks in space-confined, high-risk, or radioactive environments, garnering substantial research interest. Nevertheless, their application remains limited to environment- and surface-specific scenarios. To this end, we present a contact-adaptable, peeling-resistant, and cross-medium WCR integrated with gecko- and octopus-inspired self-adaptive rigid-soft hybrid tracks. The hollow mushroom-shaped adhesive microstructures (HMSAMSs) on the robot tracks simultaneously couple the adhesive structural morphologies of gecko and octopus as well as inherit their functions. These microstructures demonstrate superior normal and tangential adhesion forces and adhesion-to-preloa

SUBMITTER: Liu H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12778059 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature