You’ve probably never heard of a μtug (yes, that’s a Greek letter) but you might, soon. It’s a class of tiny robot that borrows abilities from gekkos and inchworms to pull weights 2000 times its own weight on any surface it can stick to…walls, floors or, potentially, airport runways.
Models built so far are tiny, and no one has yet scaled it up to the point where it could replace the 50-60 ton tugs that are used to help aircraft push back from the jetway, but the engineers involved believe that in this case, scaling up would make the device more efficient and faster. Read MORE or check out the video above!
