Scientist suggests super-sticky Spidey suit
Submitted
by
Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes "A professor from the Polytechnic of Turin has developed a method for building a suit that could allow humans to cling to vertical surfaces like the comic book hero Spider-man.
The suit would use a similar principle used by geckos and spiders, which possess millions of tiny hairs on their limbs allowing them to stick to surfaces. Adhesion strength drops exponentially as the surface area and weight increases, so creating the same effect in a human-sized subject has been considered impossible.
"By using something like nanotubes we should be able to create sufficient attractive force to easily support a human, and by laying them out a hierarchical structure, the user should be able easily detach each limb in a simple peeling motion," said Professor Pugno. He predicted that we could see such suits by 2017, but added that they will need to be adhesive enough, easily detachable and self-cleaning if they are to be feasible."
The suit would use a similar principle used by geckos and spiders, which possess millions of tiny hairs on their limbs allowing them to stick to surfaces. Adhesion strength drops exponentially as the surface area and weight increases, so creating the same effect in a human-sized subject has been considered impossible.
"By using something like nanotubes we should be able to create sufficient attractive force to easily support a human, and by laying them out a hierarchical structure, the user should be able easily detach each limb in a simple peeling motion," said Professor Pugno. He predicted that we could see such suits by 2017, but added that they will need to be adhesive enough, easily detachable and self-cleaning if they are to be feasible."
