Youtube: Scientists reach the heights with gecko-inspired robot

Faculty of Applied Sciences

Alumni profile: Jeff Krahn, Engineering

November 02, 2011
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Jeff Krahn completed his MASc in engineering at SFU this year, and now he's making headlines around the world with his robotic gecko.

The research, published in the IOP Publishing journal Smart Materials and Structures, provides an alternative to using magnets, suction cups or claws which typically fail at climbing smooth surfaces like glass or plastic. It also paves the way for a range of applications, from inspecting pipes, buildings, airplanes and even nuclear power plants to employment in search and rescue operations.

Known as the Tailless Timing Belt Climbing Platform (TBCP-11), the robot can transfer from a flat surface to a wall over both inside and outside corners at speeds of up to 3.4 cm per second. It is fitted with sensors that allow it to detect its surroundings and change direction.

Researchers mimicked the “dry, sticky toe pads” of the gecko by creating an adhesive using a material called polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), manufactured as tiny mushroom cap-like shapes that are 17 micrometres wide by 10 micrometres high.

Lead author Jeff Krahn’s work on getting the robot to climb formed the bulk of his master’s thesis. The research was carried out together with engineering science assistant professor Carlo Menon in the MENRVA Research Group.

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  • Adhi Susilo PhD Education Thesis Examination
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  • Haiyang Wang, Phd defence, Comp Sci
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    Ph.D. Thesis DEFENSE HAIYANG WANG Master from Tongji University, CHINA 2005 Thursday May 30th, 2013 11:30 a.m. TASC1 9204 West FROM PEERS TO CLOUDS: DISTRIBUTED RESOURCES FOR CONTENT DELIVERY AND USER COLLABORATION In this thesis, we tackle the problem of content delivery and user collaboration with emerging Internet technologies. Our investigation starts from peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing with social relations to contemporary cloud computing with flexible resource provisioning. We seek to leverage distributed resources for efficient sharing and collaboration, which leads to a hybrid system design that seamlessly bridges users' local resources to public datacenters. We first explore social-network-based optimizations in peer-to-peer content delivery. We give solid evidences that long-term social relations can be found and applied to enhance the sharing efficiency in peer-to-peer networks, and present practical implementation strategies for the popular BitTorrent system. We then investigate the performance of cloud-based file synchronization applications and identify the bottlenecks in their system design, in particular, the task interferences. We propose an interference-aware provisioning algorithm, which effectively mitigates the problem. We further examine the users' interactions in state-of-the-art cloud-based distributed interactive applications. We find that, despite the benefit in terms of cost savings and better scalability, the cloud-based deployment greatly increases the users' interaction latency. We demonstrate that a smart assignment algorithms for virtual machines can remarkably reduce such latency. Finally, we present a real-world system design that effectively bridges users' local resources to enterprise cloud platforms. Our measurements as well as system analysis indicate that it serves as a complement of great potentials to enterprise cloud services. Ph.D. Examining Committee: Dr. Jiangchuan Liu, Senior Supervisor Dr. Mohamed Hefeeda, Supervisor Dr. Qianping Gu, Internal Examiner Dr. Kui Ren, External Examiner Dr. Steven Pearce, Chair
  • PhD Defence, Haiyang Wang, Comp Sci
    11:30 AM - 1:30 PM
    May 30, 2013
    Ph.D. Thesis DEFENSE HAIYANG WANG Master from Tongji University, CHINA 2005 Thursday May 30th, 2013 11:30 a.m. TASC1 9204 West FROM PEERS TO CLOUDS: DISTRIBUTED RESOURCES FOR CONTENT DELIVERY AND USER COLLABORATION In this thesis, we tackle the problem of content delivery and user collaboration with emerging Internet technologies. Our investigation starts from peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing with social relations to contemporary cloud computing with flexible resource provisioning. We seek to leverage distributed resources for efficient sharing and collaboration, which leads to a hybrid system design that seamlessly bridges users' local resources to public datacenters. We first explore social-network-based optimizations in peer-to-peer content delivery. We give solid evidences that long-term social relations can be found and applied to enhance the sharing efficiency in peer-to-peer networks, and present practical implementation strategies for the popular BitTorrent system. We then investigate the performance of cloud-based file synchronization applications and identify the bottlenecks in their system design, in particular, the task interferences. We propose an interference-aware provisioning algorithm, which effectively mitigates the problem. We further examine the users' interactions in state-of-the-art cloud-based distributed interactive applications. We find that, despite the benefit in terms of cost savings and better scalability, the cloud-based deployment greatly increases the users' interaction latency. We demonstrate that a smart assignment algorithms for virtual machines can remarkably reduce such latency. Finally, we present a real-world system design that effectively bridges users' local resources to enterprise cloud platforms. Our measurements as well as system analysis indicate that it serves as a complement of great potentials to enterprise cloud services. Ph.D. Examining Committee: Dr. Jiangchuan Liu, Senior Supervisor Dr. Mohamed Hefeeda, Supervisor Dr. Qianping Gu, Internal Examiner Dr. Kui Ren, External Examiner Dr. Steven Pearce, Chair

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