bionic gecko feet

Chinese-led research team creates bionic gecko feet

A U.S. research team led by Chinese scientists has created a nanotube-based dry adhesive that surpasses the stickiness of gecko feet -- no easy feat, since the animals can cling to nearly any type of surface.

Oh god, I so want some spiderman gloves, that would be so awesome!

hey good job on this! i have been getting burnt out on all the serious political threads, it's refreshing to see a light hearted topic like this that is still very interesting. let's see if anyone can see signs of a conspiracy in this one, i bet someone can do it. after all, it already had the chinese involved. i think they are developing this technology to give them an edge in the parralel bars in the 2012 olympics...someone check the age on those geckos! or maybe this headline: The Geico Gecko is a secret Chinese Spy!

Originally posted by Enigma Publius
hey good job on this! i have been getting burnt out on all the serious political threads, it's refreshing to see a light hearted topic like this that is still very interesting. let's see if anyone can see signs of a conspiracy in this one, i bet someone can do it. after all, it already had the chinese involved. i think they are developing this technology to give them an edge in the parralel bars in the 2012 olympics...someone check the age on those geckos! or maybe this headline: The Geico Gecko is a secret Chinese Spy!

Haha, so true! ATS sure has gotten a bit overloaded lately with the people that think the government are sending money to the Reptilians through the LHC. Or similar stuff... lol.

This is really cool, I know they have had a lot of trouble actually getting this stuff to work, this has been tried sooooo many times before with very little success, those Gecko's are just incredible! But now weve finally done it, and actually better.

And for the record, I think Spiderman gloves would be totally cool, too.

reply to post by Shere Khaan


The problem with this technology is that we can't use it to climb everything Geckos can, simply because we weigh a lot more. Geckos can climb painted surfaces, for example, whereas if we tried (with, say, Gecko-esque gloves), we'd just rip the paint off. The same goes for bricks - the gloves would be attached to the outer part of the brick, and simply rip parts of the brick off. They'd work fine on something with a surface that can support the weight of a person (say, marble or steel), but most walls will still be out of bounds.