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Climbing soft robots are of tremendous interest in both science andengineering due to their potential applications in intelligent surveillance,inspection, maintenance, and detection under environments away from the ground.The challenge lies in the design of a fast, robust, switchable adhesionactuator to easily attach and detach the vertical surfaces. Here, we propose anew design of pneumatic-actuated bioinspired soft adhesion actuator workingboth on ground and under water. It is composed of extremely soft bilayerstructures with an embedded spiral pneumatic channel resting on top of a baselayer with a cavity. Rather than the traditional way of directly pumping airout of the cavity for suction in hard polymer-based adhesion actuator, weinflate air into the top spiral channel to deform into a stable 3D domed shapefor achieving negative pressure in the cavity. The characterization of themaximum shear adhesion force of the proposed soft adhesion actuator showsstrong and rapid reversible adhesion on multiple types of smooth andsemi-smooth surfaces. Based on the switchable adhesion actuator, we design andfabricate a novel load-carrying amphibious climbing soft robot (ACSR) bycombining with a soft bending actuator. We demonstrate that it can operate on awide range of foreign horizontal and vertical surfaces including dry, wet,slippery, smooth, and semi-smooth ones on ground and also under water withcertain load-carrying capability. We show that the vertical climbing speed canreach about 286 mm/min (1.6 body length/min) while carrying over 200g object(over 5 times the weight of ACSR itself) during climbing on ground and underwater. This research could largely push the boundaries of soft robotcapabilities and multifunctionality in window cleaning and underwaterinspection under harsh environment.

Switchable Adhesion Actuator for Amphibious Climbing Soft Robot