Researchers Build Electrostatic, Wall-Crawling 'Bots

Adhesives, man-made tornados, or plain ol' dexterity and balance -- researchers have come up with all sorts of ways for robots crawl up walls and tall buildings. Now SRI International, which has long been a leader in robotics, has developed 'bots that scale and stick to walls using electrostatic charges. Computerworld reports:

[SRI's Philip] Von Guggenberg said that the new electrical adhesive technology called compliant electroadhesion, provides an electrically controllable way to stick machines to a wall. Since positive and negative charges attract, SRI researchers induce negative charges into the wall being climbed, while at the same time imposing positive charges in the robot, using an on-board battery source.

That adhesion lets the robots, using either feet or tracks, scale a vertical wall. They can even climb walls covered in dust and debris, or made out of concrete, wood, steel, glass, drywall, and brick. However, they have a harder time with damp surfaces, von Guggenberg noted. He also added that regular robots, especially those with tracks, can be retrofitted with the technology and turned into wall climbers.

SRI also says the technology could eventually be used to enable human wall crawlers, which could prove useful for U.S. Special Forces.

[Image: SRI International]