Skip to main content

Wall climbing robots inspired by the feet of gecko

Published on
The feet of gecko are not sticky to touch but contain many tiny hair, that when pressed against a surface stick to it due to Van der Waals forces developed by shear stress. Van der Waals forces develop between electric dipoles.

Some cool current applications are wall climbing robots which attach to the walls by pressing this material and robots developed by NASA to clear debris and old satellites in outer space.

As the feet of gecko are not sticky to touch, their adhesion is durable and does not wear off. They can even attach to rough or dirty surfaces as the hair can easily clean themselves due to the small surface area of their tips. 

Some applications that I could think of were, using this adhesive material (made from carbon nanotubes, plastics and silicon) and attaching it to the bottom of a drone. The drone can squeeze the material attached with spring (to ensure equal load distribution) to develop shear force which allows the object to stick with it and squeeze again to let it go. This application could also be utilized at the bottom of a helicopter to load and unload their payload.  Hope you learned something!
Labels:

Popular

My TKS Application journey

Published on
My journey  I applied for The Knowledge Society in February 2022. Initially, I had opened an application but then decided not to go for it, thinking that I wasn't smart enough to get in. Mia Nguyễn was my application advisor who mailed me about my incomplete application, asking me if there was anything I needed help with. There were few interview slots remaining and she asked if they should close my application. I opened her mail and began typing an apology letter, telling her that I would not be applying. As I finished the letter, my finger hovered over the send button. I sighed, selected my mail and pressed backspace. What was the harm in trying? I typed out a quick message, asking her to hold my slot. I opened MS Word and started on the essays I needed and stayed up all night, only to submit them a few hours before the deadline.  In late April, I was accepted into the 10 month Global Virtual Program as a TKS Innovator with considerable financial aid. Unfortunately, my finan...
Read more

The summer of the beautiful white horse: Analysis, Summary and Theme

Published on
The summer of the beautiful white horse. : An Analysis  This short story written by William Saroyan is part of the CBSE Class 11 Snapshots NCERT Syllabus. While high school students would certainly benefit from the articles, literary enthusiasts are encouraged to join the discussion of how the author uses diction, literary terms and tone to portray the meaning of through the text.   Nostalgia marks the tone of narrator in the opening line of the sentence, reminiscing over how the world used to be magnificent and delightful. The sentence “life was still a delightful and mysterious dream” aptly describes how the narrator perceived the world as a nine year old. The theme of exaggeration and awe is repeatedly seen throughout the story through the character of uncle Khosrove and the narrator’s admiration of the horse. So awe stricken was Aram that he could not believe his eyes when his “crazy” cousin Mourad brought a beautiful white horse outside the window of his room around daybr...
Read more

Mistakes I have made as a high-school student

Published on
I was introduced to the U.S. College admissions in my Grade 10 when I saw an Instagram advert of Stanford. The pandemic was still raging and that was my excuse for not being able to work on my extracurriculars which were practically none. I postponed the activities to next year, the year 2021. I look back and think how naive I was. I was waiting for schools to open and blissfully waiting. The next year came and the situation still seemed bleak. It was then I realized that I cannot wait for things to go offline. My final exams of a grade that was spent online got cancelled and I was free by mid April. I was so fickle minded when it came to which college degree I wanted to have. All I knew was I wanted to study abroad. My junior year school admissions were postponed too. For a while I was happy about being cut off from the tethers of board exams. But satisfaction does not stay for long in my mind. When May came I was frantic about my extracurriculars. I was so desperate fo...
Read more