Abstract
MODULAR TRANSPORTATION USING ROBO-TUGS WITH BIOMIMICRY OF GECKO FEET
Dinakar B. R.*, Jaishree G. Jalde, Bharath S. and Manjunath B. T.
ABSTRACT
Geckos are able to climb on walls even walk on ceilings but they don?t glue, a chemical adhesive, or suction. If you touch a gecko toe it feels soft and smooth, and not sticky, at all. Gecko toes actually have very fine hairs (setae) packed 5,000 per mm2 (three million per square inch) into the ridges (or lamellae) found on their underside. The Gecko Tape or Controllable adhesive is the kind of adhesive that sticks to the surface only during shear and does not stick during normal application of forces. To achieve this, we are using Moldmaking RTV Silicone adhesive and a millipore membrane. The controllable adhesives used by insects to both carry large loads and move quickly despite their small scale inspires the Robo-tug concept. These are small robots that can both move quickly and use controllable adhesion to apply interaction forces many times their body weight. The adhesives enable these autonomous robots to accomplish this feat on a variety of common surfaces without complex infrastructure. This work shows that using such an adhesive system enables small robots to provide truly human scale interaction forces, despite their size and mass. This will enable future robots to not only sense the state of the human environment in which they operate but apply large enough forces to modify it in response.
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