Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering has created one of the coolest robots in recent history. The Wyss Institute, in collaboration with Korea’s Seoul National University and Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, teamed up to make a tiny robot insect that can jump on water. The robot mimics the real life insect called a strider, you know, the small little bugs seen floating on top of the water in ponds, lakes and rivers. The researchers observed these Striders by camera to determine how they are able to walk and jump on the waters surface.
Water’s surface needs to be pressed at the right speed for an adequate amount of time, up to a certain depth, in order to achieve jumping. The water strider is capable of doing all these things flawlessly. Kyu Jin Cho, senior author.
The team determined that the Strider can make its jumps on water thanks to the slight curve at the tips of its legs. So they went into the lab and built the tiny robot that can exert force equivalent to 16 times its body weight without breaking the water’s surface. While no purpose for these robots has been announced, there are certainly applications they could be used in both the consumer and military markets. It’s just amazing that this team was able to accomplish such a feat.
[button link=”http://www.themarketbusiness.com/2015-07-31-similar-to-the-strider-a-tiny-robotic-insect-can-leap-high” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: The Market Business[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
