2024 TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield Runner-Up geCKo materialsreturned to the stage at this 12 months’s exhibition to present recent products and go deeper into the commercialization of its technology.
Founder Dr. Capella Kerst revealed 4 recent uses for geCCo’s super-strong dry adhesive: a semiconductor wafer handling tool, an automatic gripper for smooth surfaces (like solar panels or glass), a curved robotic “end-effector” for more irregular shapes, and a universal gripper for robotic arms.
geCCo technology is inspired by the way real lizards use their feet to grip surfaces. Kerst sets it up like a recent type of Velcro, but one that leaves no residue, will be attached and detached quickly, and doesn’t require electrical charging or suction. A one-inch slab of this material can support a weight of 16 kilos, and geCKo’s dry adhesive can adhere as much as 120,000 times – and can stay attached for seconds, minutes or years.
The ability to quickly adapt dry glue to existing manufacturing, picking and other robotic applications has proven popular. Kerst landed customers Ford, NASA and Pacific Gas & Electric before even participating in last 12 months’s Battlefield scene.
“Has this year gone by as quickly for anyone as it has for us?” Kerst said on the TechCrunch Disrupt stage on Wednesday. geCKo’s CEO said that since last 12 months’s program, her company has tripled the size of its team and raised $8 million in funding. Meanwhile, geCCo’s dry glue was used on six space missions last 12 months, which, in line with Kerst, proves the material’s ability to work in many environments, including in a vacuum.
On stage Wednesday, Kerst showed off a Fanuc robotic arm that uses six geCCo plates to quickly grab and move objects, and then showed videos of other business applications.
In one of those videos, Kerst demonstrated that the geCKo material is used to soundly move semiconductor wafers faster than current suction and vacuum technology allows.
“Our customers at TSMC, Samsung, Intel and Kawasaki have said we have a goal [move the wafers] at an acceleration of two G,” she said. “We decided to blow them up and repeatedly, reliably, use geCCo materials to realize an acceleration of 5.4 G.”