Tiny robots climb walls carrying more than 100 times their weight | Hacker News Reader

Tiny robots climb walls carrying more than 100 times their weight

newscientist.com

121 pointsjonbaer15 comments

The 12g robot moving 2000 times it's weight, if it does, is pretty impressive. That's 24kg so you'd only need about four, weighing less than an iPhone, to drag furniture or people around.

Another related video with Geckos and synthetic 'geckskin':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZJYbcG0Ts0

Horizontal tests are meaningless without data on the coefficient of friction between the load and the surface it is on. With sufficiently low friction a very large mass could be moved with virtually no effort:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uRql1fjZQf0

Square-cube law. That is all.

I think you're right, even though you didn't explain what you meant.

Yes, a 12 gram robot can carry 2,400 grams of weight but this does not necessarily mean you can build a 12 kg robot that will carry 2,400 kg up the side of a building because it would require drastically more stickiness/surface area friction.

I think this is what you meant by "Square-cube law."

This is what I was thinking when they said "This is the same as you pulling a blue whale" because I don't think that's accurate. The whale would have a LOT more surface area causing a lot more friction and taking a lot more force.

Though I could be wrong.

That's pretty much exactly what I meant.

Ok, I build a 1000 12 gram bots?

"On Being the Right Size": http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html

I was thinking about a roomba that washes windows on office buildings.

Tiny roombas that can dust my house and reach into areas on my carpet that big roombas cant. Roombas that can clean my ceiling in hard to reach places. Roombas that can go up to my lights, signal to them to turn off, and replace the individual LEDs in a modularized light assembly.

Tiny roombas to help find the pen you just sat down, turned your head, turned back, and the pen is gone. You know it went somewhere, but you're not quite sure where; it might not even be in the room anymore.

Tiny roombas to clean your bathroom, or unclog pipes, or micro-repair infrastructure like houses and roads. Tiny roombas to help to agriculture work, or terraform Mars.

Giant roombas to terraform Mars, the size of houses.

sigh.

> unclog pipes

On a larger scale, "pigs" [1] are used to clean and maintain oil pipelines.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigging

I was thinking about entering the bank when a tiny roomba with a dead battery crashed on the pavement in front of me, leaving a crater of rubble and plastic.

Tiny Roomba would probably have such low terminial velocity it may just blow away or land like a feather.

Tiny Roomba, like the robot in OA, won't require power to stay stuck to window.

Tiny Roomba, like Roomba's today, will know it's power reserves and be able to return to charging station before shutdown.

Tiny Roomba will be solar powered.

I wonder how long until the adhesives wear out?

One of the most interesting properties of gecko technology is they are not like traditional 'sticky' adhesives. They are powered by sub-atomic attraction and are self cleaning with use. Pretty bizarre :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_setae

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