In the past few years, we have covered plenty of nature inspired climbing robots here. University of Waterloo researchers have come up with a climbing robot inspired by geckos and inchworms. It is made with a liquid crystal elastomers and synthetic adhesive pads that can altered at the molecular level to mimic how geckos move.
This 4cm long, 3mm wide, one mm thick robot can climb on a vertical wall. Its light-responsive polymer strip simulates the motion of an inchworm while gecko-inspired magnet pads are for gripping.
[HT] [credit: Jian Sun, Lukas Bauman, Li Yu, Boxin Zhao]