Octopus-Inspired Underwater Gripper with Rapid Stiffness Tuning and Robot Enabling Upward Transport

TL;DR

A new octopus-inspired underwater gripper can quickly change stiffness and help robots transport objects underwater efficiently.

Contribution

The gripper achieves the fastest stiffness transition time reported, enabling versatile underwater manipulation.

Findings

The gripper softens in 1.3 s and rigidifies in 0.8 s, the shortest transition time reported.

It can grasp objects of varying weight and rigidity in cluttered underwater environments.

The robot integrates active buoyancy control and manipulation for vertical transport.

Abstract

Underwater operations—such as marine environmental protection, resource recovery, and seabed exploration—require grippers with high adaptability. Existing rigid and soft grippers are constrained by their inherent material limitations, restricting their manipulation versatility. In this work, we introduce an octopus-inspired underwater gripper with rapidly tunable stiffness, integrated into an upward transport robot designed for efficient underwater object manipulation. Achieving softening in 1.3 s and rigidification in 0.8 s, the gripper demonstrates the shortest stiffness transition time reported to date, substantially advancing rapid and adaptive underwater manipulation. Emulating the octopus’s multimodal grasping strategy, the system can handle a wide range of objects—from light to heavy and soft to rigid—even in cluttered underwater environments. The integrated robot combines active buoyancy control with manipulation to enable continuous grasping and vertical transport of submerged objects. This study offers a robust solution for adaptive underwater manipulation, with potential applications in autonomous marine operations, ecological restoration, and ocean missions.

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