Also: suction cups, cephalopod suckers
Octopus suckers grip wet surfaces, inspiring patches and soft robots.
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Kier showed suckers attach by lowering pressure inside the cavity using a 3D muscle array; suckers reached pressures below 0 kPa on wettable but not non-wettable surfaces.
As reported in: Kier (2002). The Structure and Adhesive Mechanism of Octopus Suckers. Integrative and Comparative Biology. doi:10.1093/icb/42.6.1146
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Tramacere and colleagues used MRI, ultrasound and histology to map Octopus vulgaris suckers, finding an ellipsoidal chamber with a roof protuberance.
As reported in: Tramacere, Beccai, Kuba et al. (2013). The Morphology and Adhesion Mechanism of Octopus vulgaris Suckers. PLoS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0065074
Yue and colleagues coupled suction cups with soft fluidic circuits and actuators to mimic the octopus's hierarchical control in soft robots.
As reported in: Yue, Lu, Tang et al. (2025). Embodying soft robots with octopus-inspired hierarchical suction intelligence. Science Robotics. doi:10.1126/scirobotics.adr4264
Baik and colleagues made a reversible wet/dry adhesive patch based on the dome-like protuberances inside octopus suction cups.
As reported in: Baik, Kim, Park et al. (2017). A wet-tolerant adhesive patch inspired by protuberances in suction cups of octopi. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature22382
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