The quest to make robots that don’t fall over at the slightest impediment has been making great strides recently.

A team from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada have combined an adhesive inspired by gecko feet with caterpillar tracks to make a robot that can walk up walls, they describe their robo-gecko-tank in the journal Smart Materials and Structures. According to the team their bot can move from a flat surface to a wall at up to 3.4 centimetres per second.

Of course, what you really want is to see this thing climbing a wall. Ladies and gentlemen: the gecko bot…

The paper is available here.