Robotic sucker can adapt to surroundings like an actual octopus
This is not the first time that the sub-tassus has been inspired by highly adaptive pontoons. Some models have used pressure rooms intended to push against a surface and to comply. Others have focused more on the correspondence of the morphology of a biological miller. This included giving microistagic sucking ones, the tiny tooth -shaped projections on octopus suction cups which give them stronger adhesion.
The previous methods of artificial conformation have been successful, but they could be subject to the flight of gaps between the suction cup and the surface he tries to stick, and they often needed empty pumps to work. Yue and his team created a suction cup which was morphologically and mechanically similar to that of a octopus.
The suckers are muscle structures with extreme flexibility which helps them to comply with objects without leakage, to contract when entering objects and to release the tension when you let them go. This inspired researchers to create dragees from a silicone sponge material inside and a soft silicone pad outside.
For ultimate biomimicry, Yue thought that the response to the problems encountered with the previous models was to offer a miller who simulated mucus secretion from octopus suckers.
It really sucks
We previously thought that the suction of cephalopods was a product of the soft and flexible bodies of these creatures, which can be easily deformed to adapt to the surface it needs to grasp. The secretion of mucus was mainly neglected until Yue decides to incorporate it into its Robo-Sukers.
The mucus of Mollusk is known to be five times more viscous than water. For Yue suckers, an artificial fluidic system, designed to imitate the secretions published by the glands on a biological miller, creates a liquid seal between the suction cup and the surface from which it adheres, almost eliminated the gaps. It may not have the strength of the Octopus slime, but water is the next best option for a robot that will be immersed in the water when it will explore, perhaps in submarine caves or at the bottom of the ocean.
