Tag Archives: climbing robots

Gecko-like toes needed for climbing robots

Caption: The spotted belly of a Tokay gecko used by UC Berkeley biologists to understand how the animal’s five sticky toes help it climb on many types of surface. Credit: Yi Song

Those are fabulous toes. Geckos and the fine hairs on their toes have been of great interest to researchers looking to increase qualities of adhesion for all kinds of purposes including for robots that climb. The latest foray into the research suggests that it’s not just the fine hairs found on gecko toes that are important.

A May 8, 2020 news item on ScienceDaily makes the proclamation,

Robots with toes? Experiments suggest that climbing robots could benefit from having flexible, hairy toes, like those of geckos, that can adjust quickly to accommodate shifting weight and slippery surfaces.

Biologists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics observed geckos running horizontally along walls to learn how they use their five toes to compensate for different types of surfaces without slowing down.

Close-up look at the toe pads of a Tokay gecko. They have about 15,000 hairs per foot, each of which has split ends that maximize contact with the surface and support the animal’s weight by interacting with surface molecules via van der Waals forces. (Photo by Yi Song)

You can find that image and more embedded in the May 8, 2020 University of California at Berkeley news release (also on EurekAlert) by Robert Sanders. The news release delves further into the work

“The research helped answer a fundamental question: Why have many toes?” said Robert Full, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology.

As his previous research showed, geckos’ toes can stick to the smoothest surfaces through the use of intermolecular forces, and uncurl and peel in milliseconds. Their toes have up to 15,000 hairs per foot, and each hair has “an awful case of split ends, with as many as a thousand nano-sized tips that allow close surface contact,” he said.

These discoveries have spawned research on new types of adhesives that use intermolecular forces, or van der Waals forces, to stick almost anywhere, even underwater.

One puzzle, he said, is that gecko toes only stick in one direction. They grab when pulled in one direction, but release when peeled in the opposite direction. Yet, geckos move agilely in any orientation.

To determine how geckos have learned to deal with shifting forces as they move on different surfaces, Yi Song, a UC Berkeley visiting student from Nanjing, China, ran geckos sideways along a vertical wall while making high-speed video recordings to show the orientation of their toes. The sideways movement allowed him to distinguish downward gravity from forward running forces to best test the idea of toe compensation.

Using a technique called frustrated total internal reflection, Song, also measured the area of contact of each toe. The technique made the toes light up when they touched a surface.

To the researcher’s surprise, geckos ran sideways just as fast as they climbed upward, easily and quickly realigning their toes against gravity. The toes of the front and hind top feet during sideways wall-running shifted upward and acted just like toes of the front feet during climbing.

To further explore the value of adjustable toes, researchers added slippery patches and strips, as well as irregular surfaces. To deal with these hazards, geckos took advantage of having multiple, soft toes. The redundancy allowed toes that still had contact with the surface to reorient and distribute the load, while the softness let them conform to rough surfaces.

“Toes allowed agile locomotion by distributing control among multiple, compliant, redundant structures that mitigate the risks of moving on challenging terrain,” Full said. “Distributed control shows how biological adhesion can be deployed more effectively and offers design ideas for new robot feet, novel grippers and unique manipulators.”

The team, which also includes Zhendong Dai and Zhouyi Wang of the College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, published its findings this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Role of multiple, adjustable toes in distributed control shown by sideways wall-running in geckos by Yi Song, Zhendong Dai, Zhouyi Wang, and Robert J. Full. Proceedings of the Royal Society B; Biological Sciences 29 April 2020 Volume 287Issue 1926 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.0123 Published [online]:06 May 2020

This paper is open access.

A gripping problem: tree frogs lead the way

Courtesy: University of Glasgow

At least once a year, there must be a frog posting here (ETA: July 31, 2018 at 1640 hours: unusually, this is my second ‘frog’ posting in one week; my July 26, 2018 posting concerns a very desperate frog, Romeo). Prior to Romeo, this March 15, 2018 news item on phys.org tickled my fancy,

Scientists researching how tree frogs climb have discovered that a unique combination of adhesion and grip gives them perfect technique.

The new research, led by the University of Glasgow and published today [March 15, 2018] in the Journal of Experimental Biology, could have implications for areas of science such as robotics, as well as the production of climbing equipment and even tyre manufacture.

A March 15, 2018 University of Glasgow press release, which originated the news item, provides a little more detail,

Researchers found that, using their fluid-filled adhesive toe pads, tree frogs are able to grip to surfaces to climb. When surfaces aren’t smooth enough to allow adhesion, researchers found that the frogs relied on their long limbs to grip around objects.

University of Glasgow scientists Iain Hill and Jon Barnes gave the tree frogs a series of narrow and wide cylinders to climb. The research team found that on the narrow cylinders the frogs used their grip and adhesion pads, allowing them to climb the obstacle at speed. Wider cylinders were too large for the frogs to grip, so they could only climb more slowly using their suction adhesive pads.

When the cylinders were coated in sandpaper, preventing adhesion, the frogs could only climb the narrow ones slowly, using their grip. They were not able to climb the wider cylinders covered in sandpaper as they couldn’t use their grip or adhesion.

Dr Barnes said: “I have worked on tree frog research for many years and I find them fascinating. Work on tree frogs has been of interest to industry and other areas of science in the past, since their climbing abilities can offer us insights into the most efficient way to climb and stick to surfaces.

“Climbing robots, for instance, need ways to stick, they could be based either on gecko climbing or tree frog climbing.  This research demonstrates how a good climbing robot would need to combine gripping and adhesion to climb more efficiently.”

The study, “The biomechanics of tree frogs climbing curved surfaces: a gripping problem” is published in the Journal ofExperimental Biology. The work was funded by the Royal Society, London and by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper (I love the pun in the title),

The biomechanics of tree frogs climbing curved surfaces: a gripping problem by Iain D. C. Hill, Benzheng Dong, W. Jon. P. Barnes, Aihong Ji, Thomas Endlein. Journal of Experimental Biology 2018 : jeb.168179 doi: 10.1242/jeb.168179 Published 19 January 2018

This paper is behind a paywall.