UPDATED 6/14: New images are up of the real City Climber. Click on them to see the robot up close.

Thanks to PC Magazine Editor of Reviews Lance Ulanoff for his report!

Wall climbing looks fun when Spider-Man does it, but it's serious business for companies and landlords trying to figure out the health of their high-rise buildings. Now researchers at the City College of New York have developed a wall-climbing bot, called the City Climber rover, that can climb walls, transition from walls to a ceiling and even haul four times its own weight.

According to a report from Discovery News, the robot was developed by Jizhong Xiao, a professor in the colleges' Computer Science, Electrical Engineering Dept. Xiao, who currently teaches advanced mobile robotics at CCNY, has been developing the ideas since the days of his doctoral work at Michigan State University.

The first version of the robot was, according to a research paper on the Michigan State University Web site, a microbot based on a Texas Instruments Digital Signal Processor chip and had two suction cups attached to a hinge. The City Climber has no hinges, uses a vacuum and pressure to flatten itself against wall and ceiling surfaces, and weighs around 1 kilogram. There's no word on what CPU it uses.

Discovery News reports that a future version will feature a camera. All we can say is, Ladies, close your blinds.

Tune into this week's Gearlog Radio show (available on Friday) to hear Lance discuss this robotic project.