As emphasized by numerous researchers in recent years, the behavior of contacts under mechanical loads has a highly nontrivial scale-dependence. Smaller contacts in this context often are better contacts. The superior performance of numerous small contacts (compared to fewer, correspondingly larger contacts) is impressively demonstrated in the animal world. The Gecko - to name an example - can control the adhesion between its feet and a wall much better than all current robots. The Gecko's amazing capabilities are often associated with the term "contact splitting". Contact splitting encompasses different mechanisms, summarized in References 4 and 5.
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