Crawl On The Walls Like Spiderman With This Robot – Wait, ain’t there suction cups for the job already? While there exist suction cups that are strong enough to carry the whole weight of the body, they have one big flaw – unless the surface is smooth like marble of glass, the cups will fail. Fortunately, though, Kaige Shi and Xin Li have the solution for this problem – water!
– The Idea
Sometimes, ladders or ropes are just not very convenient when it comes to reaching higher places. For one, ropes engage all of our limbs, making it almost impossible to do much else but the climbing itself.
On the other hand, ladders can get your hands free to a degree, but there are limits on how high and how free can you be. While there are airlifts designed to clean the outer glass of high buildings that erase those flaws, airlifts still need to be installed first before use and it’s not like it applies to all tall objects anyway.
See the similarities? Current devices just simply can’t let you get on with climbing – overall, they either took more time and certain privileges from you. This is where the robot came in. Shi and Li redesigned suction cups – which are easily equipped to our limbs – to make it possible to scale a barren building. So yes, it isn’t only online casino like SBOBET which is equipped with high technology, the outside world is filled with invention too.
– So… Why Water?
Apparently, the orthodox suction cups can’t stick properly to rough surfaces. Plus, depending on the weight of the item, the cups may fail with time. So, it’s impossible to make a multifaceted climbing device with it… without some tweaking. Shi and Li had the idea to use water inside the cups to create another layer to the grip. This layer supposedly reinforces the gripping ability of the device and act as a sealant to rough surfaces and make them ‘grip-able’.
– Current Progress
Shi and Li successfully made a prototype of the robot. However, their models still need to have outer power and water supply attached to it, making the climbing range limited depending on how long the cables are. Their current mission is to find a way to minimize water use in order to create a portable model with its own water supply within the structure.
Of course, unlike Spiderman who can scale any building with bare hands, this robot looks bulky on the limbs. However, this design may change after future development. In fact, Shi and Li wanted to make this robot fully portable while decreasing its water use.
