Climbing

Inspections of tall metal structures can be difficult for people to perform up-close and in person, and while aerial drones may help, their limited battery life is a problem. That's where the magnetic-footed Magnecko robot is intended to come in.

It's safe to say that any task which involves going up high is at least somewhat dangerous. The HB1 robot was designed with this fact in mind, as it climbs walls and even scuttles across ceilings so people don't have to.

As the population increasingly moves towards tech jobs, there's now a shortage of coconut harvesters in India. That's why scientists there have built a tree-climbing coconut-harvesting robot, that could perhaps someday take up the slack.

The CopenHill facility in Denmark was already a particularly versatile space, but yet another activity is being added to its repertoire. The finishing touches have now been added to what is claimed to be the tallest climbing wall in the world.

While there already are powered suction-cup devices that allow people or robots to climb walls, they only work on smooth surfaces. Chinese scientists, however, have now developed a system that sticks to rough surfaces via spinning water.

​Every ounce matters for climbers hauling gear up big walls, so essential items billed as the lightest in the world are always going to attract a bit of interest. That is very much the case with the G7 Pod wall ledge which offers a very lightweight alternative to the hefty portaledges.

Reaching into your pocket to answer the phone just isn't an option when you're charging down a snow-covered mountain or white-knuckling a set of mountain bike grips. So the all-new Bonx rides on your ear and streamlines communications in the field.

At small climbing centers, regular visitors can quickly exhaust all the available runs. At a new facility in the US city of Austin, Texas, which is said to be the world's largest bouldering center, climbing sections are rotated twice a week to create new runs.

Wheelchair users have had to live with the fact that stairs, sharp curbs and doorsteps either required assistance to maneuver, or made access to some locations impossible. The tracked TopChair-S, however, is designed to change that.

​Although they aren't as common as flying drones, we are seeing an increasing number of wall-climbing robots. What isn't so common, however, are devices like the VertiGo, which both drives on the ground and climbs up walls.

A rock climbing bivy is a cot that a mountain climber fastens to a cliff face, where they proceed to spend the night. Although you might not want to push things quite that far, you can now get the same sort of thrill by staying in a Skylodge Adventure Suite.

Moving between the levels of a building is not something people tend to think of as anything other than perfunctory. We rarely think, for example, about whether our going upstairs or downstairs is adequately fun. A new installation at the OK Center for Contemporary Art however, does just that.