Safa, MahdiGustavo, ChavezLara, JoseRedmond, PatrickSola, John2023-07-052023-07-052023-04-13https://hdl.handle.net/10657/14801Artificial Gecko Skin was developed in 2010s by Stanford professor Dr. Mark Cutkosky in response to a competition to design, build and test a climbing robot in a vertical environment. To achieve this Dr. Mark Cutkosky was inspired to mimic a gecko's feet. After researching the physics of how a gecko climbs, he found some amazing realities. Geckos do not use suction cups. Nor do they have little hairs or spikes. Their feet have little spatula which are a few nanometers in dimension. This allows for an extremely small point of contact giving the gecko the ability to obtain an extremely close contact with the material it is climbing. This contact is so tight it is called an adhesion. Dr. Mark Cutkosky's research shows the gecko leverages the molecular Vander Vaal’s force at the atomic level. Geckos achieve this considerable bond by use of an extremely week molecular bond. Dr. Mark Cutkosky created a crude approximation of artificial gecko skin using molded silicon. He has successfully used his silicon gecko skin in robotics to pick up extremely delicate objects using a small force normal. This artificial material when loaded in shear creates enough surface area of contact to hold up an object. Perhaps the most amazing feature of this silicon gecko skin is that is not a glue or suction. When the lifting force is released the gecko material effortlessly lets go of the object. By integrating gecko material into repeatable processes much time and energy could be saved.enThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).Civil EngineeringPoster