This paper presents a bio-inspired soft climbing robot designed to overcome the limitations of conventional climbing robots in unstructured, irregular, or deformable environments. Mimicking the arboreal locomotion of sloths, the robot employs an embracing-based anchoring mechanism driven by a tensegrity-structured spiral system, capable of generating gripping forces exceeding 20 N through topological interlocking. Coupled with a telescopic actuation module utilizing tunable tower springs, the robot achieves adaptive body deformation and bidirectional locomotion. Experimental results demonstrate stable vertical climbing, passive adaptation to curved and variable-diameter surfaces, active gap-crossing via elastic energy release, and reliable performance on deformable substrates. This work establishes a new paradigm for robotic locomotion in complex 3D environments by integrating bio-inspired topological constraints with elastic actuation.
Hu et al. (Fri,) studied this question.