Biomimetic Research Of Special Robot-driven Mechanism

The design for the special robot foot draws the inspiration from nature where the gecko can climb rapidly up vertical surface, even across the ceiling. Microscopy has shown that a gecko foot has nearly five hundred thousand setae, each 30-130 u m in length and approximately 5 u m in diameter. The seta form van der Waals bonds with the surface to facilitate adhesion.The size of contact between the seta and the surface is in micro-scale. This paper introduces the micro-scale elastic theory of adhesive contact, which can be used to calculate the adhesive force, and the application of the JKR theory in the synthetic seta.An automatic measurement device is developed for the selection of the bionic materials, which depends on the characteristics of adhesion and friction. This paper describes the setup and procedures used to obtain adhesion and friction of 4 samples of polyurethane.The experimental results of samples of polyurethane show that the adhesion increases with the magnitude of normal load at the logarithmic rule; that tangential force increases with magnitude of normal load at the logarithmic rule; and that tangential force increases with magnitude of negative normal load at the linear rule. It is instructional significance for the selection of bionic materials.Lastly the friction coefficient of the snake is also measured using this test device.