Real life spiderman suit! (Tech)

Hi all, new member here, thought I'd contribute an original article that doesnt seem to have been commented on:

Geckos inspire 'super-adhesive'

Future applications could include an adhesive to repair aircraft, skin grafts or even a Spiderman-style suit.

Rapid repair of combat vehicles with patches stuck on with this stuff would be hugely useful.

But forget about that - SPIDERMAN!!!!!! - Imagine how deadly a team of Navy Seals would be if they could silently climb up walls/hulls etc using modified gloves and boots...

Combine that with their flip down infrared/Night vision/etc eyepiece, their thermobaric grenades and bullets from their machine-sniper and their nanotech superthin body armour and we've got actual superhero units!

Scary but cool.


[edit on 1-1-2007 by Giordano Bruno]

What about when they need to change weapons? or use devices? How could you modify these gloves and boots to give u the freedom to make use of your weapons during combat. Sure the stealth factor would be good but i highly doubt it would be practicle.

Yeah you're right, they'd be an absolute nightmare to take off. We've all held something so sticky it just transfers from one hand to the other...

Oh well perhaps my spidermen commandos are a little far fetched but I still cant wait to see the demo of a man scaling a vertical sheet of glass.

Gecko's can turn their "stickiness" on and off at will. We have loosely replicated this by getting the hairs to curl up in the presence of a small electric current. So small infact that you could easily power it by a piezo-electric crystal that will power the system off the subjects body heat. This could signal a boom in "extreme climbing" sports heh.

From what I understand about gecko feet they stick by van der vaals surface attraction forces, and have a kind of 'slap on, peel off' system. But to be able to turn on or off the ability with a simple switch would be incredible. Would have to be reliable though, I wouldnt fancy having a short circuit halfway up a dam!

Powring devices off body heat also sounds amazing, I'm off to read about piezo crystals.

Yeah, Piezo-crystals are neat. I have a dimmer that dims and turns the light on and off just through body heat from my hand. Wear a glove and it won't work anymore. Hold you finger on and it will dim up and down to max and min until you reach a level you like. Tap it and it turns off or on at the last illumination it was set at. Quite neat actually.

I was trying to find the article on the gecko's ability to turn this ability on or off and stumbled into this.

www.physorg.com...

Self-cleaning is very necessary as current "gecko tape" gets dirty rather quick.

I can't find the article, I'll look again tomarrow if i remmeber.

geckos do not have sticky tape qualities to the pads on their feet. what it is like is a tree branch, that clings or catches tiny crevasses in the material) at the quantum level. and they roll their jointed fingers backward to release the pads from contact of a surface.

this quantum level attachment is what scientists are trying to achieve.

**they had a special on Discovery Science about a month ago about this

No it's not quantum-scale, it's nanoscale. It's a Quantum Effect though.

[edit on 2-1-2007 by sardion2000]

im sorry i wasnt saying you did, i was just clearing the point to some one that didnt get it. i want correcting you seriously, its just coincidence you had tape in your post.

Originally posted by Glyph_D
im sorry i wasnt saying you did, i was just clearing the point to some one that didnt get it. i want correcting you seriously, its just coincidence you had tape in your post.

K. No prob.

Originally posted by sardion2000
No it's not quantum-scale, it's nanoscale. It's a Quantum Effect though.

but isnt it on the quantum energy level???

thats how the hairs are able to get so close to the surface.

yes on an engineering scale its nano yes


[edit on 2-1-2007 by Glyph_D]

Found another interesting article that I completely forgot about. Apparently some researchers are claiming a 200 fold increase in adhesive strength over natural gecko hairs. That's incredible if true. This stuff is going to be used much more then the regular "spider man/women" type of stuff. Imagine a screw that when inserted into a prepared hole that will almost never come loose due to environmental degradation(self-cleaning and such). This could usher in a true cradle to cradle society(designing all of our products to be disassembled and recycled and eventually reused in some other form).

www.uakron.edu...
The UA researchers are part of a team developing synthetic hairs from carbon nanotubes that have adhesion forces 200 times higher than those observed with gecko foot-hairs. The team includes Dr. Ali Dhinojwala, UA associate professor of polymer science; UA polymer graduate student Betul Yurdumakan; and Nachiket Raravikar and professor Pulickel Ajayan from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

but isnt it on the quantum energy level???

The correct term is Van der Waals' forces.

en.wikipedia.org...

Here is a relatively complicated article if you want to dig down more.

[edit on 2-1-2007 by sardion2000]

“Our mathematical models suggest that self-cleaning in gecko setae is a result of geometry not chemistry,”

Link here - (already in previous post)

Incredible.

The creatin of non degrading dry adhesives would also be a revolution, allowing so many industrial (and other) applications that would currentlybe impossible. Even something as simple as a production line that could grip non metallic items like a magnet without the need for complex robotic machinery. If this stuff can be made relatively cheaply it could do wonders for manufacturing costs.

[edit on 2-1-2007 by Giordano Bruno]

ill agree to call it "Van der Waals' forces" for now, but my point was this grip is located at the the atomic level(which is what the Van der Waals' forces imply).

however does it bother anyone else that the sources repeatedly call this a form of "sticky adhesion" as if it were utilizing glue? or is it just me?yes there is adhesion, the same as cat claws bond to a tree, but the bonding is done at a much smaller scale and with thousands of more "claws".

it bothers me they are misleading ppl on what is actually taking place. but this could be OCD

[edit on 2-1-2007 by Glyph_D]