The curious looking gripping mechanism above draws inspiration from geckos. Large surface area on a gecko’s feet allows it to climb vertical walls by taking advantage of electrostatic forces. For example, the video below shows a robot with an electrostatic “foot” that climbs up a vertical wall
This new project uses the same premise to grab objects.The biggest advantage cited by SRI: reversible adhesion to a number of surfaces with extremely low steady-state power consumption.
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