SuperTech Tuesday…er, Wednesday #2…

As the saying goes: “Better late than never!” My whole schedule is weird right now…

Anyway! You weren’t here for a diatribe on my failings, you’re here for the exciting news about technology being developed today that can be utilized for the superhero of tomorrow, right? In a previous journal entry, I expanded the abilities of the suit to include a limited version of wall-crawling. Today I’m going to expand on that by showing you a few technologies that people are working on to make such an power a possibility in the near future.

First are the “Spiderman” vacuum gloves. Rather than explain it myself I’m going to have the creator speak for himself in the following videos. WARNING! This guy is a professional and had permission from the company to do this. DO NOT DO THIS ON YOUR OWN!

Exciting right? I know I was when I saw SPOILER! him scale the building and almost fell a time or two. END SPOILER! But…I don’t think it was the exactly the right way to go about it for my hero’s wall-crawling ability. For one thing it’s bulky. In order to lift his body-weight, he had to make them that large. I’m not sure if it’s possible to make a glove size version without a better suction design. Still, it shows that it can be done.

Next up comes from an article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/02/beetleman_beetleman/. According to the article a pair of US professors claim to have created a way for wall-crawling to work. Their secret? Using the surface tension of water. Their point is illustrated by stating how a pair of glass slides will stick together when a drop of water is between them. Like a water-walking beetle, the wall-crawling ability is created by using many small droplets working together without touching and combining. Like a water-walking beetle, the wall-crawling ability is created by using many small droplets working together without touching and combining. The two professors took this idea and have already created a prototype that has 1000 300-micron holes that can hold about 30 grams. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but imagine a pair of gloves with over a million of them? They control the water surfaces by using an electric current to squeeze out a single drop from each hole to keep the droplets from combining together.

As interesting as this particular design is, there are some drawbacks. The surface needs to be completely smooth for the device to work properly. Glass is the best surface to do this with, so no to wall-crawling on brick or other granulated surfaces. There is, however, a nifty application when using a film over the holes: powerful force is created. As they said in the article: “You can think about making a credit card-sized device that you can put in a rock fissure or a door, and break it open with very little voltage.” I like that idea and may use it in a future suit design.

For my final example of wall-crawling technology comes from the company SRI International. Their method? Electroadhesion. Literally an electrically controllable adhesion technology. They’ve created small robots that release an electrostatic charge through the pads that are touching a surface. If you’ve ever had a piece of plastic stick to you, no matter how many times you tried to shake it off, you can sort of understand how it works. The great thing about this particular design is that it works on many different surfaces, not just on glass. Right now it’s limited to only small robots, but eventually they want to apply it to human wall-crawling.

I’m amazed at so many different methods to gaining the ability to wall-crawl like Spiderman. I suppose that it’d be easier to get bitten by a radioactive spider than to create any of these devices, but more than likely, you’d end up dead from radioactive spider venom instead of gaining spider-powers.

That’s all for this week! I’ll be seeing you.