Advanced Bionic Attachment Equipment Inspired by the Attachment Performance of Aquatic Organisms: A Review

Abstract

In nature, aquatic organisms have evolved various attachment systems, and their attachment ability has become a specific and mysterious survival skill for them. Therefore, it is significant to study and use their unique attachment surfaces and outstanding attachment characteristics for reference and develop new attachment equipment with excellent performance. Based on this, in this review, the unique non-smooth surface morphologies of their suction cups are classified and the key roles of these special surface morphologies in the attachment process are introduced in detail. The recent research on the attachment capacity of aquatic suction cups and other related attachment studies are described. Emphatically, the research progress of advanced bionic attachment equipment and technology in recent years, including attachment robots, flexible grasping manipulators, suction cup accessories, micro-suction cup patches, etc., is summarized. Finally, the existing problems and challenges in the field of biomimetic attachment are analyzed, and the focus and direction of biomimetic attachment research in the future are pointed out.

Holding in the stream – convergent evolution of suckermouth structures in Loricariidae (Siluriformes)

“…During attachment, the animals maintain their grip by friction with structures at micro-and nanoscale, i.e. papillae or microvilli [11,14,15,16,25,28,55,56,80,81; see reviews 29,30,32]. Additionally, the mucus between and on these structures provides strong contribution to the attachment strength [82].…”

“…In general, attachment structures in sh have received attention in the last decades, which even enabled the development of adhesive materials or gripping and adhesive devices [56,69,71,78,82,87,88,89,90,91,92; see reviews 29,30,31,32,93]. However, in contrast to remoras, gobies, hillstream loaches, darters, or cling sh, which were experimentally studied with regard to attachment performance and mechanisms [18, 25,26,55,56,62,73,76,77,78,79,80,94], to date only few experiments [11,72] addresses the real attachment performance of the loricariid suckermouth sh.…”

“…In sh taxa, such as Balitoridae, Gobiesocidae, Cyclopteridae, Liparidae, Echeneidae, and Cyprinidae, attachment structures and attachment mechanisms have been previously investigated [18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28; see reviews by 29,30,31,32].…”

Biomimetic Structure and Surface for Grasping Tasks

“…Bioinspired structures and surfaces have certain limitations in terms of the usage environments, surface roughness, and curvature. They are typically designed for specific adhesion environments, with pressure adhesion often used in atmospheric or underwater high-pressure conditions [ 1 , 2 ], claw-like attachment structures suitable for air environments, and gecko-inspired adhesive surfaces often used in clean environments such as air or vacuum [ 3 ] ( Figure 1 ). Additionally, the adaptability of bioinspired structures and surfaces to surface roughness varies.…”

Design and Assessment of Bird-Inspired 3D-Printed Models to Evaluate Grasp Mechanics

“…Applications of biomimicry also go beyond simple replication and rather utilize the underlying mechanisms of that process [8,20,[23][24][25]. For prosthetic design, improving the ability of the device to reliably grasp different types of objects will be beneficial to the user.…”