For centuries soldiers have only been able to overcome obstacles like walls, barricades and shafts with the use of ropes and ladders. Given the cumbersome and noisy nature of those tools researchers have long been interested in developing better egress technologies to aid the modern warfighter. Chief among those efforts has been DARPA’s Z-Man program, which recently debuted a pair of climbing paddles inspired by gecko’s feet.
“The gecko is one of the champion climbers in the Animal Kingdom, so it was natural for DARPA to look to it for inspiration in overcoming some of the maneuver challenges that U.S. forces face in urban environments,” said Dr. Matt Goodman, the DARPA program manager for Z-Man. “Like many of the capabilities that the Department of Defense pursues, we saw with vertical climbing that nature had long since evolved the means to efficiently achieve it. The challenge to our performer team was to understand the biology and physics in play when geckos climb and then reverse-engineer those dynamics into an artificial system for use by humans.”
Copying this design, Draper Labs’ researchers were able to mimic the performance of a gecko’s foot and scale it up to accommodate the weight of a human. In a test held earlier this year DARPA successfully saw a 99kg (218lb) man ascend a 7.6m (25ft) vertical glass surface using nothing more than a pair of Z-Man paddles. With that test DARPA demonstrated that its bio-inspired Z-Man paddles have everything it takes to break through the centuries old conundrum of improved climbing.
Though its unknown when, how or if its new Z-Man paddles will become part of a soldier’s tool kit, DARPA and Draper Labs are continuing their development and testing of the Z-Man project. In the future DARPA believes that Z-Man technologies could be used to create reversible adhesives for use in the biomedical, industrial and consumer fields.
Image Courtesy of DARPA