climb

Image of a green tree python from www.kids.britannica.com J.H. Pete Carmichael—The Image Bank/Getty Images Dr. Greg Byrnes (Siena College, Loudonville, NY) and Dr. Bruce Jayne (University of Cincinnati, OH) discovered that snakes use more force than is necessary to support their weight when climbing.  To climb, snakes rely on friction and repeatedly contract and extend their bodies, a process called concertina locomotion. To study the forces generated by snakes during this type of locomotion, the researchers constructed a vertical cylinder that was covered with textured tennis racket tape…
Researchers at DARPA are using geckos to create biologically inspired methods of scaling vertical walls. Check out this video demonstration of "Geckskin":
StickyBot is a robot designed by researchers at Stanford Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Lab as part of the Robots in Scansorial Environments project (RiSE). The robotic gecko tests their hypotheses about the "requirements for mobility on vertical surfaces using dry adhesion. The main point is that we don't need more adhesion, we need controllable adhesion." The site boils down the "key ingredients" as follows: * hierarchical compliance for conforming at centimeter, millimeter and micrometer scales, * anisotropic dry adhesive materials and structures so that we can control…
Climbing Insect Robot Official roboty info: RiSE is a small six-legged robot that climbs vertical terrain such as walls, trees and fences. RiSE's feet have claws, micro-claws or sticky material, depending on the climbing surface. RiSE changes posture to conform to the curvature of the climbing surface and a fixed tail helps RiSE balance on steep ascents. RiSE is about 0.25 m long, weighs 2 kg, and travels 0.3 m/s. (more below the fold) Each of RiSE's six legs is powered by two electric motors. An onboard computer controls leg motion, manages communications, and services a variety of sensors…