Peeling in electroadhesion soft grippers

Electroadhesion endows robots with super-human abilities: mechanical geckoes that climb vertical walls and soft grippers that grasp the most delicate objects. Based on electrostatics, the adhesion forces are turned on and off by an electrical signal, promising extremely fast operation, from silent fully solid-state devices. Practical applications of electroadhesion have however been limited to date by two main challenges: (1) the adhesion forces can vary over 1000x by simply changing the angle between the electroadhesive tape and the object, (2) release is often slow due to residual adhesion when voltage is removed.