Controllable dry adhesives have attracted significant interest; however, their development and application remain limited owing to their high cost, complexity, and machine precision required for their fabrication.

Herein, a scalable roll-to-roll technique for fabricating wedge-shaped controllable dry adhesives for use in robotic grasping tasks is developed. Wedge-shaped structures with various geometrical dimensions are manufactured, and the structure with optimal wedge dimension (50 μm width and 30° tip angle) demonstrates peak and stable normal adhesion values of 14 and 6.8 kPa, respectively. Moreover, parallel grippers are designed to grasp everyday objects that have flat surfaces and a variety of geometries and surface textures.

This novel scalable, low-cost, and simple method can be used to manufacture a straight and continuous wedge structure in large scale for controllable dry adhesives that can be effectively applied in robotic manipulation tasks.

More information:  https://doi.org/10.1002/adem.202200377