
Climbs Walls And Stick 3,114 Views - Click for Larger Image
It’s only 2007 and we’ve already seen a number of gecko robots. Why not?
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have developed a gecko-like robot with uber-sticky fibres on its feet - only this robot’s feet are twice as sticky as those of a real life gecko. This enables the robot to climb walls.
Having said that, we saw another version of robot Geckos in 2006… Which robot do you like best?
Forget strapping plungers to the legs of a Robosapien--researchers have developed a robot with real sticking power thanks to the dry elastomer adhesive (a gecko-like, ultrasticky fiber) on its rotating feet. These wall-climbing robots show promise for great future use, like inspecting the hulls of spacecraft for damage, but for now, we're totally fixated on how awesomely creepy it looks in the video where it totally owns a vertical challenge.
It's not the first robot to use fiberlike dry adhesives to stick to surfaces, says Metin Sitti, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, who led the research at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), in Pittsburgh. But this robot should prove to have far greater sticking power, thanks to fibers that are twice as adhesive as those used by geckos.
(core77)
References: core77
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