Nature is  the  most  awesome  , self-mechanised  system  with  innumerable  mysteries  and  interesting  conceptions. Mankind  has  the  inevitable  interest  to  mimic  things  from  nature  and  to  take  a  lot  of  inspirations  from  it. The  range  of  inventions  from  airplanes  to  underwater  submarines, nature has influenced and played a vital role in developing our area of inventions and in its wide expansion. 

     So  ,  Biomimetics (or) Biomimicry  is  taking  inspirational  thoughts  from  nature  and  applying  it  in  a  wise  manner  to  meet  human  needs  and  to make  life  efficient. Since  nature never fails in its own rules and concepts, it is really good to rely on it and develop innovative stuff. 

       In  this series of articles, we see different examples of biomimetics, which are mind blowing and noteworthy. 

1.THE  ART  OF  MIMICKING  GECKOS:

     In our houses and gardens, we see a lot  of lizards climbing up and down on walls, surface of tree trunk.etc. It  is the rows of thousands of tiny hair-like structures on their feet (called setae ) that  are  responsible for this amazing ability of geckos. These setae create weak attractive forces between the surface of feet and the climbing surface. This attractive force created is instant and without much effort, geckos can create and remove such forces in different regions of surface while climbing.

       Climbing pads inspired by this concept of gecko climbing, were developed. Nevertheless, some serious problems arose. 

      When the size of the pad is large, the stickiness got reduced. Practically, geckos don't distribute their body weight evenly on the setae of it's feet. Some setae stick to the surface with quite strong force and some other setae are never involved in sticking with the climbing surface. 

         So  it is an uphill task to create such a distribution of weight to the various parts of the pads. These problems were overcome by using suitable material and distributing the weight to tiny springs attached to the pad.In case,  if a region of pad gets detached from the surface suddenly, the weight distributed to that region will be redistributed to the rest of the pad. This ensures  effective  adhesiveness  with  the  climbing  surface . 

    Further developments and improvements are needed and are concerned in research. In general, this lays the base for the working principle of climbing pads. These pads are used for boulder climbing, cleaning of skyscrapers. etc. Finally , we owe a big hats-off to the geckos' fantabulous capacity!!. 

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