Hosted by Leonardo Social Labs

Fondazione Leonardo gave us the possibility to talk about our research and spread it on all social media and online. Here an extract of their article online:

Have you ever dreamed of running upside down or climbing vertical walls like a gecko or a lizard? In this video Antonio Papangelo, associate professor at the Department of Mechanics, Mathematics and Management of the Polytechnic of Bari, illustrates the research carried out in the TriboDynamics Laboratory where the adhesion between two surfaces is studied.

“The secret of geckos and lizards – says Papangelo – is to be able to quickly regulate the force with which the paw adheres to the wall. This allows him to move quickly, to defy gravity.”

The adhesive surfaces being studied at the Polytechnic of Bari do not use glue or even the suction cup effect but, just like geckos, exploit the adhesive interactions that “are naturally established at nanometric scales in order to adhere to an object. These surfaces – continues the professor – are designed and optimized on the computer through numerical simulations, are then manufactured with a very high resolution, one hundred times smaller than the diameter of a hair, and their adhesive properties are tested in an experimental apparatus designed specifically” . Here the surfaces are excited by a micrometric vibration which allows us to quickly adjust the adhesion force, increasing or decreasing it as we wish.

The development of this technology is also made possible thanks to the funding of 1.5 million euros received from the European research project “SURFACE” (Grant agreement ID: 101039198): it is the acronym of “Towards Future Interfaces With Tuneable Adhesion By Dynamic Excitation” and consists of developing adhesive surfaces to be adjusted based on superimposed micro vibrations.