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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\u2019s multimodal grasping strategy, the system can handle a wide range of objects\u2014from light to heavy and soft to rigid\u2014even 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.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.34133\/cbsystems.0528","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,26]],"date-time":"2026-01-26T10:02:52Z","timestamp":1769421772000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.34133\/aaas_crossmark_01","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Octopus-Inspired Underwater Gripper with Rapid Stiffness Tuning and Robot Enabling Upward Transport"],"prefix":"10.34133","volume":"7","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9066-5118","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mingxin","family":"Wu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"National Center for International Joint Research of Micro-Nano Molding Technology, School of Mechanics and Safety Engineering, \rZhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China."},{"name":"State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Intelligent Biomimetic Design Lab, School of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, \rPeking University, Beijing 100871, China."}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yurong","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mechanical Engineering, \rNational University of Singapore, Singapore 117575, Singapore."}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jiaxi","family":"Wu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Intelligent Biomimetic Design Lab, School of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, \rPeking University, Beijing 100871, China."}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Waqar Hussain","family":"Afridi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Intelligent Biomimetic Design Lab, School of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, \rPeking University, Beijing 100871, China."}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xingwen","family":"Zheng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control, Department of Control Science and Engineering, \rZhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China."}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Chen","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Intelligent Biomimetic Design Lab, School of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, \rPeking University, Beijing 100871, China."}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Guangming","family":"Xie","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Intelligent Biomimetic Design Lab, School of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, \rPeking University, Beijing 100871, China."},{"name":"Institute of Ocean Research, \rPeking University, Beijing 100871, China."}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"221","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,31]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_4_2_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1260352"},{"key":"e_1_3_4_3_2","first-page":"7","article-title":"How to deal with seafloor marine litter: An overview of the state-of-the-art and future perspectives","author":"Madricardo F","year":"2020","unstructured":"Madricardo F, Ghezzo M, Nesto N, Mc Kiver WJ, Faussone GC, Fiorin R, Riccato F, Mackelworth PC, Basta J, de Pascalis F, et al. 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