@SPACEdotcom @michaeldwall @NASAJPL @FastCoDesign @UMassAmherst Gecko Feet Inspire Climbing Space Robots
Some very interesting work is being done at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in terms of replicating the tiny “setae” (or “hairs”) on the bottom of their feet (you can see a greatly magnified image of a gecko’s foot at the bottom of this post). space.com has an article (video below) discussing the work being done to understand and replicate gecko’s feet along with a good explanation of van der Waals forces.
When I see toys that run up and down vertical surfaces, they normally employ magnets or air suction and I wondered why there wasn’t any tape or pad products which provides this capability - after a quick Google search, I found this article (fastcodesign.com) and associated video below from 2012 which talks about a prototype tape and what it’s capable of.
One practical question that I would have in terms of robots (and even geckos) is how do you clean the setae? I would imagine that dust, hair, flecks of paint, etc. would get attached to the surface and there would be some need to remove them else the surface area will be reduced to the point where the gripper is useless.
Any ideas?