[HN Gopher] Glewbot scales buildings like a gecko to inspect wal...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Glewbot scales buildings like a gecko to inspect wall tiles
        
       Author : PaulHoule
       Score  : 32 points
       Date   : 2024-05-17 16:31 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.arduino.cc)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.arduino.cc)
        
       | xnx wrote:
       | Cool bot. I'm guessing there most be some advantages to having a
       | system that climbs the wall instead of descends from a line to
       | justify the extra complexity.
        
         | bobthepanda wrote:
         | Probably more flexibility? A window cleaning type system only
         | really works for a straight segment of wall, plus if you have a
         | human doing it, it's potentially dangerous if anything happens
         | to the system during for example a sudden high wind event.
         | 
         | you could use one robot for this, but on a building like the
         | empire state building you would need one for each level's 4+
         | sides of wall.
        
           | kwhitefoot wrote:
           | This would surely have a safety line if used in real life, no
           | one would want it falling from ten storeys up onto a busy
           | street. So it wouldn't have quite as much freedom of movement
           | as it ha in the lab.
        
             | bobthepanda wrote:
             | a safety line that can potentially move side to side still
             | is quite a lot more flexibility than just going straight up
             | and down.
             | 
             | also, these things are like the size of an arduino board so
             | i imagine they're cheap to deploy, and easy to replace.
             | plus, if you have a fleet of them, you can probably just
             | have some on standby ready to go, as opposed to a fixed
             | window washing style system.
        
               | kwhitefoot wrote:
               | > easy to replace.
               | 
               | Replacement cost wasn't my concern, it landing at
               | terminal velocity on someone's head was what I worry
               | about.
        
       | amacneil wrote:
       | Gecko Robotics[0] are doing similar things.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.geckorobotics.com/
        
       | dansitu wrote:
       | It's a great feeling to see a cool robotics project on the front
       | page of Hacker News and realize they used your software
       | (http://edgeimpulse.com) to train the machine learning component!
       | 
       | Congratulations to the authors. Now I better stop reading HN and
       | get back to work :D
        
       | jonah wrote:
       | To me "Gecko" implies van der Waals forces[1] which this does not
       | use. It just uses suction cups. The only Gecko part is a tail for
       | balance/counter-force.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.192252799
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | Right. I was expecting this to use the gecko grabbing system
         | developed in Mark Cutkowsky's lab at Stanford. That's about
         | fifteen years old now. Works, but applications have been few.
         | 
         | Suction-based climbing robots are available as commercial
         | products.[1]
         | 
         | The biggest application of climbing robots is cleaning ships'
         | hulls. That uses magnets for adhesion. It's a huge win, since
         | hull-cleaning robots don't require a drydock. Some can even be
         | used on ships under way.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvYTdKBnWdI
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-05-20 23:01 UTC)