Gecko-Inspired Climbing Suit Turns Glass Walls Into Ladders
Spider-Man may have radioactive spider powers, but Jake Laser has something nearly as useful: gecko skin. The creator behind the JLaservideo YouTube channel built a wearable climbing system that lets him scale glass walls using a dry adhesive inspired by gecko feet. There are no suction cups, sticky glues, or anchors involved. Instead, the suit relies on microscopic structures, van der Waals forces, and some clever mechanical engineering to keep a human attached to a wall.
Geckos pull off their gravity-defying trick with millions of microscopic hairs called setae. Each branches into even smaller structures that make extremely close contact with a surface. At those distances, weak intermolecular attractions known as van der Waals forces become useful. Individually they aren't much, but spread across a huge number of contact points, they can generate substantial holding force.
An attempt to make DIY gecko skin from wax (📷: JLaservideo)
Laser initially tried...
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