A Four-legged Wall-climbing Robot with Spines and Miniature Setae Array Inspired by Longicorn and Gecko

In industrial applications, climbing robots are widely used for climbing and detection of rough or smooth pipe surfaces. Inspired by the special claws of longicorn is that can crawl on rough surfaces and the array of tiny bristles of geckos that can crawl on smooth surfaces, a new type of wall-climbing robot for rough or smooth surfaces is proposed in this paper. The bionic palms of the robot are suggested with special bionic hooks inspired by the longicorn and bionic adhesive materials inspired by the gecko with a good performance on adhering on the surfaces. The special bionic hooks are manufactured by the 3D printing method and the bionic adhesive materials are made by the polymer print lithography technology. These two different bionic adhere accessory are used on the robot’s palm to achieve climbing on the different surfaces. This foldable climbing robot can not only bend its own body to accommodate the cylindrical contact surfaces of different diameters, but also crawl on vertical rough and smooth surfaces using their bionic palms.