Octopus-like suction cups: from natural to artificial solutions.

Octopus suckers are able to attach to all nonporous surfaces and generate a very strong attachment force. The well-known attachment features of this animal result from the softness of the sucker tissues and the surface morphology of the portion of the sucker that is in contact with objects or substrates. Unlike artificial suction cups, octopus suckers are characterized by a series of radial grooves that increase the area subjected to pressure reduction during attachment. In this study, we constructed artificial suction cups with different surface geometries and tested their attachment performances using a pull-off setup. First, smooth suction cups were obtained for casting; then, sucker surfaces were engraved with a laser cutter. As expected, for all the tested cases, the engraving treatment enhanced the attachment performance of the elastomeric suction cups compared with that of the smooth versions. Moreover, the results indicated that the surface geometry with the best attachment performance was the geometry most similar to octopus sucker morphology. The results obtained in this work can be utilized to design artificial suction cups with higher wet attachment performance.

Dielectric elastomer actuators for octopus inspired suction cups.

Suction cups are often found in nature as attachment strategy in water. Nevertheless, the application of the artificial counterpart is limited by the dimension of the actuators and their usability in wet conditions. A novel design for the development of a suction cup inspired by octopus suckers is presented. The main focus of this research was on the modelling and characterization of the actuation unit, and a first prototype of the suction cup was realized as a proof of concept. The actuation of the suction cup is based on dielectric elastomer actuators. The presented device works in a wet environment, has an integrated actuation system, and is soft. The dimensions of the artificial suction cups are comparable to proximal octopus suckers, and the attachment mechanism is similar to the biological counterpart. The design approach proposed for the actuator allows the definition of the parameters for its development and for obtaining a desired pressure in water. The fabricated actuator is able to produce up to 6 kPa of pressure in water, reaching the maximum pressure in less than 300 ms.