How Cool Is This?

When one sees tech as cool as this, shock and awe comes to mind when considering how this bot moves on walls and ceilings without touching anything.

There are all kinds of ways to stick to a surface, but one of the simplest is to use a gripper that operates on the Bernoulli principle. All the Bernoulli principle says is that as a liquid moves faster, its pressure decreases.

While Bernoulli grippers are fine for picking up things, they're not generally strong enough to enable a robot to support its own weight, much less climb. A research group from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand has developed a supersonic version of the Bernoulli gripper that's five times stronger than the conventional version, which is enough to allow a robot to climb on a bunch of different surfaces. And when you're watching this video, keep in mind that unlike pretty much every other climbing robot in existence, the grippers on this robot aren't touching the wall:

Seen below is a picture of Daniel Bournoulli, the brilliant mathematician who developed the principle theory of fluid dynamics used by virtually every hard drive on every computer in the world. Not bad for one born in 1700 if you ask me.