'Mechanical lizard' can scale glass walls
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A Stanford mechanical engineer has created a robot that can scale a wall of glass, thanks to feet that have been modelled after the toes of a gecko.
Mark Cutkosky, a professor of mechanical engineering and co-director of Stanford’s Center for Design Research, developed the Stickybot after previously designing a robot that could conquer rough vertical surfaces such as brick walls and concrete.
The secret to the Stickybot’s ability lies in the use of an adhesive rubber-like material with tiny polymer hairs which has been made from a micro-scale mould. These were cut to the shape of Stickybot’s four feet and then attached to them to enable the robot to climb smooth surfaces.
As it steadily moves up the wall, the robot peels and sticks its feet to the surface with ease, resembling a mechanical lizard.
The team’s next project involves scaling up the material so that it could be used to assist human climbers. A technology called Z-Man, which would allow humans to climb up similar surfaces, is in the works.
Cutkosky and his team are also working on a Stickybot successor — one that can turn in the middle of a climb. Because the adhesive they have developed only sticks in one direction, turning requires rotating the foot, so the new Stickybot robot will have rotating ankles, just like geckos do.
Readers' comments (3)
Peter Beckles | 27 Aug 2010 2:40 pm
How would the sticky hairs work on surfaces with roughness greater than that of concrete or brick? e.g. shotcrete or worse?
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Anonymous | 31 Aug 2010 2:05 pm
How does the Stickybot fair in the rain and wind climbing up these walls?
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Marc Weissburg | 3 Sep 2010 2:51 pm
The sticky hairs work by van Der Waals forces-so close contact is required. As long as the roughness is on a um-mm scale it should not matter too much. It may be that one needs to adjust the hair length to compensate for this, but that is not so difficult. Larger scale roughness may require more flexibility of the "foot".
Not too sure about rain, but since the forces do not depend on fluiid pressure or capillary action, this should not be too severe as long as the foot can make good contact. The force of adhesion generally well exceeds the force of detachment due to the animals weight (a gecko can hange by a single toe). This is dependent on the overall contact area determined mostly by hair density, so even a material with a moderately good material ought to support the weight unless the wind speed is extreme.
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