Newbie Seeks Advice on Robotics Project

[Paulo Serrano]

Hey everyone,

I'm new obviously and I have no knowledge in physics at all, or engineering at that, but plan on getting into robotics engineering. I'm still in high school so I'm pretty ignorant with all of this guys so bare with me.

I just have a question and am not so sure how easy/hard it would be to do. I want to be able to make, say, a remote control car be able to ride on a vertical wall. It's a project (a personal project, not a school project) I want to work on, but I need to be able to make a pretty heavy object stay on a wall and move freely around the wall. Even more difficult, the faster it is able to move the better.

So...umm have at it guys.

I'll probably roam around these forums for a while because you guys talk about some really interesting things.

 

[trajan22]

If the wall is a magnetic material you could use magnets, otherwise I can't see of any way in doing this.

 

[brewnog]

Suction pads? Sticky feet? Slugs, or Octopus' tentacles on hydraulic arms?

 

[Danger]

There's an old thread kicking around here somewhere called 'Improving Upon Nature' that links to a cool article about carbon nanotubes simulating (in fact exceeding) the 'stickiness' of gecko bristles. Try a forum search. I don't have time right now, but will give it a go myself later if you can't find it.

 

[Mech_Engineer]

A RC car like you are describing already exists. I've seen them on sale at the Sharper Image store. It is a avery light weight car made of styrofoam that uses a vacuum pump with a sealing skirt on the wall side to "stick" it to the wall, and then four wheels to navigate around. I've never used one to see how effective they are, but I suspect they work well as long as the wall is nice and flat.

It's like this one: http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/rc-wall-climber/index.html"