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Science

Gecko Feet and Antigravity 77

Posted by Hemos from the cool-sci-tech dept.
A number of people have e-mailed about the gecko page. It's a pretty interested article about a project to construct wall-climbing robots, and the science involved.
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Gecko Feet and Antigravity More

Gecko Feet and Antigravity

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  • The shoes would work in low gravity, sure, but if gravity's pointing anywhere other than through your feet you'll find it hard to climb.

    It'd be good for non-slip shower mats though!
  • Maybe Van der Walls forces allowed Jesus to walk on water? That would mean that he wasn't necessarily devine, but he just had millions of tiny hairs on his feet! I guess the only way we could find out was to put Jesus in a vacumn and see if he could still walk on water.
  • Similar things at cnn [cnn.com] and abc [go.com]

    Since the robot is copying nature does it get a new term besides "innovative?"

  • of course
  • can anyone else menatally hear that tiny tiny ripping noise when they pull their feet off of the wall :-)
  • Try ABC bubble gum--- for the posters. Works every time ;)



  • >2) E=mc^2. Details are left to the reader.


    Okay - just give me a hint...
    Is the cricket the 'c' in the above equation?


    ;) -tkk

  • No, but we are, which cats seem to understand all too well...

    --
  • Now, if we could just combine this technology with Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation [slashdot.org], we'd really see some world-savin' Super Hero action!


    --------------------
    "It's that guy!"

  • Jesus was a Hobbit!
  • I guess that would make more sense than a robot running an html rendering engine...

    Incidentally, Hemos, it's "interesting" :-)

    --
    grappler
  • There's a lot of research directed at getting computers to mimic the human brain, but I think it could be equally useful to get them to mimic living metabolism.

    This is waaaaay more true than you might realize. Almost every angle that we understand about metabolism in living things (and there's tons we don't know) has a potential application to the manufacture or pefection of human artifacts.

    I could go on and on, but I'll point out one of my favorites: your computer probably has a honking big and noisy fan on it to dissipate heat. Not so for most animals and plants. Part of it is low wattage parts, part of it is beautiful heat distribution and exhaust apparatus, and part of it...well, we don't know yet.

  • Well, a gecko can't really climb up a stream of water for example -- even though the water does have a surface.

    But as far as any stable, firm surface is concerned, geckos can climb them. They've had geckos climb up a microsmooth surface, which is massively smoother than glass. Note: an oily surface isn't stable -- that's why it's oily (the oil moves).

    They can do it because they're using physical forces to do it (attraction between molecules). It's downright freaky. Basically anything that isn't moving and has molecules in it can be climbed by a gecko.

  • Space-based implications (Score:3)

    by Remus Shepherd ( 32833 ) <remus@panix.com> on Thursday June 08, 2000 @09:25AM (#1015443) Homepage
    Because of the 'electrostatic' adhesion of their feet, Geckos do have traction in low gravity. They also have traction in total vacuum (apparently someone put a gecko in a vacuum to test this. :/ ). A geckobot might be ideal for extra-vehicular work in orbit.

    Then again...if the geckos' feet are electrostatic in nature, a charge applied to the surface they're walking on might cause them to repel away from the surface. So they wouldn't be much use in solar storms like the one we're currently having...
  • Well if someone builds a gecko cyborg that has feet using van der Waals forces, and wires in a sea lamprey brain like the researchers in this story [bottomquark.com] did, then I'll start to get nervous.

    GrnArrow
    www.bottomquark.com [bottomquark.ocm]

  • Antigravity is a awfully abused word. Doing something that requires a force directed against gravity is something we do all the time, standing up for instance. Climbing walls has nothing to do with antigravity. Antigravity would be a sensible word for something like a repulsive gravitational force, if something like that where to exist. And, no, I don't think it is a good word for the force of a "cosmic constant" either.

  • Re:engineering based on nature.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Check out Dr. Quinn && Dr. Ritzmann's work here at Case Western Reserve University in the neuromechanics and biorobotics research groups:

    neuromechanics.cwru.edu

    biorobots.cwru.edu

    Sincerely,
    Kevin Christie
    kwchri@wm.edu
  • ...as the robot steps on a bomb the leg is blown off but the rest of the robot remains to continue walking until all its legs are blown off.
    I bet they had a lot of problems getting it to walk on that one final leg... Probably called it 'Tigger' [the-hundre...e-wood.com] when it reached that stage...
  • You mean ... 'sucking noise' ? :)
  • the exact term for this force... vander something

    Nah, i'm not a force. Maybe a farce, but not a force ;)
  • Okay, this is pretty funny, but there's a really valid point buried in this thread.

    While we could easily rapidly oxidize (i.e. burn) the cricket for energy, it's an awfully inefficient way to get the energy out. And as for annihilating the cricket and converting it directly to energy, well, that's problematic at best.

    Somehow, our bodies are able to chemically metabolize crickets in a way that gets a lot more bang for the buck. And, if we could somehow build a bot to hunt and metabolize crickets when its battery got low, man, that would be awesome.

    There's a lot of research directed at getting computers to mimic the human brain, but I think it could be equally useful to get them to mimic living metabolism.

  • Re:engineering based on nature.. (Score:3)

    by Tassach ( 137772 ) on Thursday June 08, 2000 @12:29PM (#1015452)
    Redundant systems are abhored by most engineers and programmers

    Where did you study engineering and/or programming? Every engineer (hardware or software) I know understands that the proper use of redundancy is a Good Thing. What good engineers abhor is inefficiency -- not at all the same thing. Redundancy can be inefficient, but it is not necessarily so.

    Intelligently applied, redundancy is the hallmark of reliable and survivable systems. For example, in modern aircraft design, every critical system is multiply redundant. A good file server has many redundant components (dual power supplies, UPS, dual HD controllers, RAID system, etc). Sometimes you have to sacrifice reliability to optimize some other critical design criteria (ie: cost, weight, development time, etc)
    "The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'

  • You know, I'm not sure we should include too much redundancy in our machines.

    Generally, we're probably going to use these things in controlled environments where adaptability isn't going to be a massive concern.

    My real issue is that the more a machine adapts, the harder it is to shut it down. In some cases, this could just be amusing - but as we develop better AIs, I'm wondering if a machine could "learn" to develop protocols that would contradict what we wanted them to do. That would really open a can of worms, wouldn't it?
  • hmmm so hairy stuff makes for antigravity eh? i am gonna hafta experiment with that in the privacy of my own home...and don't forget the friction...
  • What about suction cups!!!

    Sure they wouldn't work to well going up a porous or rough surface, but they'd surely scale skyscrapers pretty well!!

  • ...is if the robot grew back body parts when they were cut off.

    Well, not really. I mean, yes, that would be more impressive, but not necessarily feasible. So climbing on walls and ceilings seems like a good accopmplishment.

  • Can +this+ open a can of coke [slashdot.org]? :)
  • trying to climb through the dusty cobwebs on my stucco walls? :-)
  • Now if we could only make a robot that ran on crickets and flies....
  • Gecko feet stick using Van der Walls forces [bbc.co.uk] (weak electrical forces at the molecular level) and due credit to kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org] for posting this earlier today.
  • Development of a single type of attachment mechanism for all surfaces may not be feasible, with this in mind a hybrid approach such as seen in nature will be employed, claws for softer materials and adhesives for other surfaces.

    Following nature's model, I doubt that any one animal can scale every suface. Even though "geckos are able to crawl up and over almost any obstacle," this implies that even they cannot climb over some things (though not elaborated). I suppose, the more one machine can do the better.

  • NPR: All things considered piece (Score:4)

    by Shin Dig ( 27213 ) on Thursday June 08, 2000 @08:42AM (#1015462) Homepage

    There was actually a piece on All Things Considered last night on this as well. It can be found in real media format here [npr.org].

  • I think a Gecko suit or gecko shoes would be cool... I can think of a million applications that would benefit from hanging from a wall or a ceiling (i.e. cleaning, painting, changing lightbulbs, becoming a master thief, etc...). It would certainly add a new element to swat or SEAL team assults on a building full of hostile people as well. Aside from that, someone could finally develop some version of sticky-tac that actually works in the extreme temperature varation that my dorm room goes through during an average school year so I wouldn't have to keep hanging up my posters every morning again...
  • Can't wait till these hit the stores. Cut to scene of runner running down alley. Man stops at wall at end of alley. Cut to scene of camera facing up from the ground at large monolithic wall. Man smiles, and touches small Swoosh Gecko logo on shoes. Message flashes across screen "Life full of obstacles? Get Traction with Geckos." Cut to scen of camera rotating around man as he walks up the wall.
  • Geological research in caves with fissures only large enough to accomodate, say, a small robotic lizard with a camera and transmitter attached, could probably benefit from this.

    I wonder if geckos have traction in low-gravity. If so, a larger version of these feet might help astronauts stay attached to the floor of a space shuttle/ISS/MIR^H^H^H^H etc.

  • I always like the idea of designing a robot or mechanical device based on a principal proven in nature.

    When you have several thousand years of evolution backing up the principal behind the design it just seems much more solid. Like the design of the bomb-walker robot (I think that's what it was called), which essentially was based on the principle of a daddy-long-legs spider.

    The control mechanism contained meters above the earth supported by several extremelly long light weight legs that move across the surface.. as the robot steps on a bomb the leg is blown off but the rest of the robot remains to continue walking until all its legs are blown off.

    Anyway, just goes to show you there is still a lot of inspiration for techinical innovation in nature.

  • Article from MSNBC (Score:4)

    by narsiman ( 67024 ) on Thursday June 08, 2000 @08:46AM (#1015467)
    Check out msnbc's [msnbc.com] article on similar lines.
  • Am I the only one very slightly disgusted by the fact that scientists know that a gecko's feet stick to walls in a vacuum? I mean... well, frankly, yuck.

  • The big question is (Score:3)

    by JamesSharman ( 91225 ) on Thursday June 08, 2000 @08:50AM (#1015469)
    Would a robot using gecko insired technology be running S.u.S.E. ?
  • Sure, if they're acidic enough anything's possible. The problem is the tracking and retrieval system.. processing is secondary. The other problem is, of course, waste disposal. Unfortunately an efficient Cricket-to-energy converter does not yet exist, so you can expect to require waste extraction...

  • Redundant systems are abhored by most engineers and programmers...
    This is not always true. For example, Apache spawns off a bunch of children and watches if they get hung up. If so then it kills them and restarts them. If a child process dies of natural causes, then it restarts it.

    Your robot idea in your last sentence is a neat idea, but if the robot could stand having it's legs blown away, and fall a great distance, then how would that protect the human?

  • Gotta love the "Robot Swarms" they're working on.. (Score:4)

    by GoodPint ( 24051 ) on Thursday June 08, 2000 @08:51AM (#1015473)
    My favourite project of theirs has to be the software they're working on to control robotic "swarms" [isr.com]. The robots communicate using infrared, and the system is designed to tolerate loss of individual units while being very scaleable (10k units).

    It reminds me a lot of Kevin Kelly's (ex-editor of Wired) book "Out of Control [amazon.com]:The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World" which discusses the impact biology will probably have on technology.

    GoodPint

  • So senryu is generalized haiku that retains 5\n7\n5\n but lacks a reference to the season, right?
  • To complement the other media stories, the press release [eurekalert.org] from EurekAlert has a bunch of good information on the science behind the gecko feet.

    -schussat

  • I meant the random assortment of ideas as flexibility; hopefully, in any situation where it'd be plausible for Robogecko to have its legs blown off, get brain damage, and also fall a great distance there wouldn't be humans along. :) Say, for instance, that there was a cave-in in a cavern being explored or mined that disabled most humans along or started to suffocate people. Then crushed legs would be useful, as well as maybe jumping or falling and catching itself. Different safety mechanisms and different redundancies for different situations. The more the merrier-- and the more versatile the tool.
  • I owned a Tokay Gecko at one time, and I assure you that a hungry gecko can climb anything that is stationary.
  • You know there would also be a lot of shrapnel flying around. I am not big on shrapnel flying at my body, but hey it is getting rid of landmines or what have you

  • This was the thing that caught my attention the most, especially in conjunction with the gecko feet technology. We've all seen the information the came back from the mars surveyor package, but just picture this: (literally) a thousand "Gecko" robots, communicating with and through each other, connected to a "mothership" computer.

    They'd be solar powered, and they move like lizards. They have inertial trackers (perhaps the ones based on fiberoptics) and maybe some small supercapacitors (for energy storage) and they'd just fan out, and pick up terrain data from some mediocre visual/sonar/radar-based sensors and from moving over it.

    To heck with that two inches per hour nonsense.

  • Lotsa gekkos in Thailand. I was idly tallying them on the ceiling one night and lost count at 30, they kept moving.
    Even with that many I can remember maybe twice having one fall on me in 4 years. Good score for the cute little critters.
    this is actually leading up to a funny
    Heard about that Spanish painter who specializes in Lizards????
    El Geko!
  • Antigravity would be a sensible word for something like a repulsive gravitational force, if something like that where to exist.

    They don't really bother me at all, but I know several people who consider spiders, insects, and yes, even geckos very repulsive. So, that being the case, maybe wall-walkers CAN be considered anti-gravity powered. :)
  • CNN [cnn.com] is running an article [cnn.com] explaining how scientists finally understand how geckos can walk up glass walls and such. Check it out.
  • No, but it'd have a certain html-rendering engine intergated into it... ;)
  • Like the design of the bomb-walker robot (I think that's what it was called), which essentially was based on the principle of a daddy-long-legs spider.

    The control mechanism contained meters above the earth supported by several extremelly long light weight legs that move across the surface.. as the robot steps on a bomb the leg is blown off but the rest of the robot remains to continue walking until all its legs are blown off.

    Aren't you thinking of Dr. Zin's (sp?) robots from Jonny Quest?

  • I think instead of Cosmic Constant, you mean Einstein's Cosmological Constant. And if current speculations about the value of the Constant are correct, it would be essentially a repulsive gravitational force, or at least the closest analogue to it that we know of. *shrug* "Antigravity" has also been used in association with questionable research into gravity shielding.
    The fact remains that the definition of a word is dictated by its use, so while you're entitled to your opinion, everyone's gonna use it as they damn well please anyway. It's not necessarily good or bad, it just is.

    Besides, I think this particular useage was tongue in cheek.

    Wombat
  • they should make post-it notes that stick Vanderwaals-like...after a while the glue on those things just doesn't glue much any more...

    //rdj
  • How about instead of adding a lamprey brain to a robot just add a gecko body to a robot brain. Just keep the basic functionality of the brain areas that control the movement.

  • Cosmic Constant, you mean Einstein's Cosmological Constant.

    Of course, I just don't want to put too much stress on my keyboard.... :-)

    And if current speculations about the value of the Constant are correct, it would be essentially a repulsive gravitational force, or at least the closest analogue to it that we know of.

    There are different schools of thought here, that very few are aware of, probably because one school is far more vocal than the other (and they've got coloumns in Scientific American :-) ). Now, this is getting so OT, I'm not going into details, but one school says basically that anything that contributes to the curvature of space should be named "gravity", and then, the negative pressure induced by may well be interpreted as repulsive gravity. The other school, which I happen to agree with, thinks that this is not good, that gravity is fundamentally connected to matter. In which case not only gravity is contributing to the curvature of space.

    Now, you bet this could be a loooooong discussion. :-)

  • To heck with that two inches per hour nonsense.

    Exactly! In fact Kevin Kelly goes further again. He looks at the idea that when you put together large numbers of agents (software or hardware) in that way, emergent behaviour can develop. What that behaviour will be can't be determined from the properties of an individual unit. It keeps coming back to the bees and the hive example. If you take a hive as an entity, it exhibits properties that are separate from those of any individual bee - that only show themselves when hundreds of bees each play a small part.

    GoodPint

  • Its called a cat. (Score:3)

    by BoLean ( 41374 ) on Thursday June 08, 2000 @08:53AM (#1015490) Homepage
    Only they aren't reprogrammable
  • As soon as an efficient Crick-To-Energy converter is created, could we then use it on every day things? Maybe some day in the future, we could use cricket-powered cars! Bring a new meaning to "fill'er-up" though :-)
  • No article that I have seen has gone into much depth over this fact. But unless they are killing the gecko, am I to believe that they can survive in a vacuum? Is this the next animal set to destroy our species and rule the planet? Let's just hope no one breeds these things with Komodo Dragons.

    Bad Mojo [rps.net]
  • If they can develop products fast enough, maybe they could have "Nike Trinity's" as a product tie-in by the time the sequel is out. It'd let you run around on walls just like in the movie(add your own slow motion though, and good luck getting off).
  • If they can develop products fast enough, maybe they could have "Nike Trinity's" as a product tie-in by the time the sequel is out. It'd let you run around on walls just like in the movie(add your own slow motion though, and good luck getting off).

    Or better yet, Spider Jerusalem's "Air Jesus" shoes from DC/Vertigo Comics' Transmetropolitan [transmetropolitan.com] by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson...

    Jay (=
  • ...that machines have their own advantages. Parts like wheels and axles just aren't biologically possible. Extensibility, partial disassembly/reassembly and drastic changes in structural & operational paradigm are available in a way not possible with living forms that have a non-discrete structure. An entirely biological paradigm could miss these particular advantages.

    I'm also surprised that the climbing problem hasn't been solved with whizzy harpoons / cableguns / grappling hooks / embedded fans or rockets or etc etc. Not that those are incredibly efficient... but they are fun and scalable. You don't see many 200 pound Geckos.

  • It's Van der Waal, not Wall.. Even cnn.com had it wrong.
  • The attraction of gecko feet to surfaces is due to Van der Waals forces, which are based on the principle that if two atoms are very close to each, then they will induce electrostatic dipoles in each other, thereby leading to an attraction.

    This is the principle by which many types of matter are held together. For example, fluid hydrocarbons are held together loosely by Van der Waals interactions. Applying an electric field to such a fluid will not vaporize it. Likewise, a gecko's feet would probably remain stuck to a surface regardless of nearby electric fields.
  • Sure, studying/mimicking a gecko's unique feet and legs is interesting science. But, if the ultimate goal is to create a rover that can traverse vertical faces etc. etc., then why not use what mother nature has already provided...a real gecko (or cockroach or whatever). The control and feedback systems would certainly be complicated, but I'm confident that a gecko could be trained. It's all a matter of voltage.

  • Gecko traction (Score:3)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Thursday June 08, 2000 @10:32AM (#1015499)
    Gecko's traction is not based on gravity, or pressure, and is only kind of related to friction (I'm saying this because I cant' remember exactly what forces are involved in friction).

    Scientists recently figured out that geckos have hairs on their feet (billions on each gecko) that they form a very complete contact with the surface they are standing on at a molecular level. Your hand pressing on a piece of glass would have millions of times less actual molecular contact.
    It is this intermolecular force that keeps geckos attached to the wall or roof. I'm sorry I can't remember the exact term for this force... vander something... or something like that.. it's an attraction between molecules (not electrical)

    I believe friction comes from this force as well. It is not so much the rough surface that causes friction, but the rough surface causes more extreme close molecular contact during motion...
  • Only they aren't reprogrammable

    No, but you can add capabilities if you put in enough coding, er... training time.

    Of course, the two cats I live with already effectively hunt down and consume anything mouse sized or smaller that they happen to notice crawling past. (In fact, "my" cat thinks that spiders are a delicacy :)

    kren

  • Parts like wheels and axles just aren't biologically possible.

    Well, maybe -- this Straight Dope [straightdope.com] column discusses this very topic.
  • anybody who's ever done any work with robotics knows that the biggest problem involved in the construction of autonomous mobile robots is finding a power supply that's not to heavy. In most robots, the power suppy makes up a substantial part of the mass (which is why we probably won't have gecko shoes any time soon. Yeah, the technologies cool, but right now, what we need in robotics is a breakthrough in power-supplies. Either that or we could run them on Transmuta's new chip (with S.u.S.E) 8p
  • >Let's just hope no one breeds these things with Komodo Dragons.

    Well - it's be pretty cute to have a 5" Komodo Dragon (awww, look at the scary lizard 8^D), but a multi-foot gecko with attached weaponry would be a little too much for my taste.
  • I know of at least two:

    1) Rapid oxidation. Place cricket in an oxygen rich atmosphere. Apply heat. Soon an exothermic reaction will begin.

    2) E=mc^2. Details are left to the reader.
    --
    Wanna hook MAPI clients to your Tru64/AIX/Linux server?
  • Redundant systems are abhored by most engineers and programmers, but they're one of the fundamentals in biological design. Especially if this robot is being considered for use in situations too hazardous for humans, redundancy is key. Back up "brain" functions in the AI as well as the ability to move on fewer than all of its legs and catch itself like a cat when it falls... maybe to accompany people in semi-hazardous but delicate situation and be a failsafe in case something goes wrong...
  • But unfortunately, it's still not particularly wacky. Seriously, though, this could be a big help for the robotics field - Wheels just don't cut it everywhere, like the article points out.

    Wacky Wall Walker
    Climbing on your robot legs
    Down the fridge's door

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