Wet Adhesion Inspired Bionic Climbing Robot

Abstract

Arthropods like stick insects have remarkable locomotion performance to climb vertical surfaces with their wet adhesion pads. This paper focuses on the development of a novel wet adhesion pad for wall-climbing robots that can scale walls. According to the morphology of insects' pads, mechanism of wet adhesive is analyzed. A novel wet adhesive pad with microstructure based on combining electroforming process with soft lithography is explored. Characteristic test results show that microstructures on the surface of pads fabricated by the proposed technique can improve the wet adhesive ability effectively. The design, manufacture, and test of a hexapod climbing robot prototype are also discussed. Experimental results show that the climbing ability of the robot with the pads is exceptional; the robot can climb up to more than 80 ° sloped surface and stick to the vertical surface statically.