Adhesion and Crawling Ability and Mechanism of the Rock-climbing Fish and Biomimetic Prototype Design (IMAGE)
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(A) Among the adhering species, the rock-climbing fish can generate great adhesion force with amazing crawling ability underwater. (B) The setae array on the brown shaded area conforms to the substrate and forms a sealing chamber through the Stefan force; the inner cavity of the suction cup in the blue area presents a pressure change due to the volume change when the pull-off force is imposed. (C) The mechanism for generating the negative pressure adhesion: upon the action of the pull-off force, the micro setae at the edge of the suction cup are kept in contact with the substrate by force “FA-setae” due to the hydrodynamic interactions, and the suction cup keeps sealed during the pull-off process. However, the suction cup deforms to increase its volume and decrease its inner pressure to generate negative pressure adhesion to resist the pull-off force throughout the process. (D) A bionic crawling fish named Climbot, an underwater climbing robot was designed based on the adhesion mechanism of the fish, which can crawl at a maximum speed of 3.7 BL/S and has an adhesion force of 25.67 ± 2.81 N.
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