The tips of the gecko's toes are covered with corrugations of fantastic complexity - it's as if they had the world's most complex fingerprints, with the world's most prominent grooves and ridges. Actually, the corrugations are lines of tiny hairs. Flattened in the right way against a surface, the hairs lie so tightly on the surface that the gecko's toes literally forma kind of chemical bond with it. (In technical terms, the gecko takes advantage of van der Waals force.) Planting their feet down and peeling them up, geckos can stick to walls and ceilings - a phenomenon that intrigues researcher Alan DiPietro, of iRobot, in Somerville, Mass. Clinging to the glass wall of a terrarium opposite a real gecko, DiPietro's crude, 13 centimeter-long, 100-gram Mecho-gecko has sticky feet that let it clumsily cling to walls, at least for short intervals. The $600 creature is built out of Delrin, powered by batteries, and guided by remote control - the machine has no sensors to interpret its environment. A second, somewhat similar machine has sticky tracks like a bulldozer; it's called a "bull-gecko." The iRobot company built both devices in the hope of obtaining the funding to build more sophisticated models. In the Mecho-Gecko's case, the new model will have micromachined striations in its feet that mimic the surface of geckos' feet.

Purpose
Provide mobility to small-sensor package, extend range of operator's senses by climbing to high vantage point
Creative Inspiration
Gecko lizard's climbing and attachment abilities
Height
6.3 cm
Length
11.4 cm
Weight
18 g
Vision
None
Sensors
None
Frame Composition
Delrin
Batteries
Lithium primary
External Power
None
KLOC
0
Cost
$600
Project Status
Ongoing
Information Source
Alan DiPietro