The 2024 runner-up within the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield, geCKo Supplies, returned to the stage at this 12 months’s present to debut new merchandise because it pushes deeper into commercializing its tech.
Founder Dr. Capella Kerst revealed 4 new makes use of of geCKo’s super-strong dry adhesive: a semiconductor wafer dealing with software, a robotic gripper for clean surfaces (like photo voltaic panels or glass), a curved robotic “finish effector” for extra irregular shapes, and an all-purpose gripper for robotic arms.
The geCKo tech is impressed by the best way real-life lizards use their toes to grip surfaces. Kerst positions it like a brand new type of Velcro, however one which leaves no residue, can shortly connect and detach, and requires no electrical cost or suction. A one-inch tile of the fabric can maintain 16 kilos, and the geCKo dry adhesive can connect as many as 120,000 instances — and may keep hooked up for seconds, minutes, or years.
The power to shortly adapt the dry adhesive to present manufacturing, choosing, and different robotic purposes has confirmed standard. Kerst’s firm gained over Ford, NASA, and Pacific Gasoline & Electrical as prospects earlier than she even competed on final 12 months’s Battlefield stage.
“Has this 12 months flown by as shortly for anyone else because it has for us?” Kerst mentioned on the TechCrunch Disrupt stage on Wednesday. The geCKo CEO mentioned her firm has tripled the dimensions of her staff since final 12 months’s present and accomplished an $8 million fundraise. And geCKo’s dry adhesive was used on six house missions within the final 12 months — a testomony to the fabric’s means to work in a number of environments, together with a vacuum, in line with Kerst.
Onstage Wednesday, Kerst confirmed off a Fanuc robotic arm utilizing six geCKo tiles to shortly seize and transfer objects round, earlier than displaying movies of the opposite commercialized purposes.
In a type of movies, Kerst confirmed geCKo’s materials getting used to soundly transfer semiconductor wafers sooner than present suction or vacuum tech permits.
“Our prospects at TSMC, Samsung, Intel, and Kawasaki mentioned we’ve got a objective to [move the wafers] at 2Gs of acceleration,” she mentioned. “We determined to blow them out of the water and do 5.4Gs of acceleration repeatedly, reliably, utilizing geCKo supplies.”
