Meeting Abstract
Over the past few decades, the number of studies investigating the gecko adhesive system has rapidly increased, particularly after it was discovered that van der Waals forces were the major source of gecko adhesion. Although numerous gecko-inspired synthetic adhesives have been fabricated and implemented into gecko-inspired robots, much is still unknown about how geckos navigate their environment using dynamic adhesive locomotion, thus perhaps limiting the effectiveness of such designs. Most studies investigate gecko adhesive locomotion while geckos are traveling upwards on vertical or inclined substrates. Given the directionality of the gecko adhesive system, traveling downward on a vertical substrate should be more difficult. To test this, we measured the average and maximum sprint velocity of two gecko species while they were sprinting upward or downward on a 2 m vertical acrylic racetrack. Preliminary data suggests that running orientation by itself had no significant effect on the average or maximum sprint velocity of the geckos, however, sensitivity to orientation was different for the two species tested (significant species by orientation interaction) for mean, but not maximum velocity. Further studies of gecko locomotion under the broad range of conditions they experience in the field is likely to influence the design of gecko-inspired synthetic adhesives and provide greater understanding as to how geckos navigate difficult terrain.
