Robotics Technology Center

Stanford Robotics @ NRW: Stickybot III

A new version of Stickybot was introduced at Stanford’s National Robotics Week event. Stickybot III, a gecko-inspired climbing robot, was completed mere weeks ago.

The difficulty in getting Stickybot III to climb is due in large part to the way the sticky pads are attached to its feet. Gecko feet use a bunch of different pliable layers of the sticky hairs, which maximizes the surface area of their feet that makes contact with the surface that they’re trying to stick to. Stickybot III only has a few layers of “sticky hair” on the pad, so if the feet aren’t oriented properly with respect to the surface, a lot of the adhesion is lost.

Click here to read more about Stickybot III.