Elliot Hawkes from Stanford makes it very clear that he and some of his peers “have an issue” with the idea that Spider-Man is not plausible.
To silence the haters, Hawkes decided to develop a pair of gecko gloves that would enable a human to scale a building in a similar fashion to Spider-Man.
Back in 2014, Hawkes built a prototype that featured 24, 100 micrometer long adhesive tiles, each coated with a sawtooth-shaped polymer.
When you press the shapes against a building/wall, only the tips touch at first, but by applying pressure, large amounts of friction can be created, and, in turn, a Spider-Man esque climbing ability is created as well.
Once you ease up on the force, the friction is gone, enabling you to SLOWLY but surely scale a wall.
The current version of the gecko gloves is much improved compared to the original version and is capable of supporting approximately 2,000 pounds, according to Hawkes.
Ah technology, bringing super powers to life. Sort of…
