Robot Jumps on Water like Water Strider

“What was very important for us while building the jumping water robot was to make sure that the maximum force does not exceed the maximum surface tension force“, noted Je-Sung Koh in an accompanying video demonstration.

The freshwater bug jumps across the surface by evenly distributing its weight on its long legs, which that are covered with tiny hairs that create minute air pockets increasing buoyancy. This way the water surface doesn’t retreat too quickly and lose contact with the legs.

On water, pressing down breaks the surface tension – meaning all you get for your efforts is a very wet leg.

Robots that can “jump on water for surveillance missions”.

The only difference is that the legs are two inches (5cm) longer to give it better rotation, or torque.

Water’s surface tension is among the highest in liquids, because of its unique chemical structure. They can be spotted on the surface of calm or slow-moving water, eat living or dead insects and prefer to reside around ponds and marshes. High-speed camera footage of the insects also revealed that the water strider sweeps its legs inward to maximize the time they can push against the surface of the water, thus maximizing the overall momentum. You may be the kind of person that believes walking on water is possible, but surely we can all agree that jumping on water-this-this is surely a feat of supernatural fitness, one would think.

The actual launch mechanism of the robot used a method inspired by flea jumps that allows extreme locomotion without intelligent control. For the robotic insect to jump off the water, it uses a lightweight catapult mechanism coupled with limited thrust to propel itself off the water without breaking the water’s surface.

Robert Wood, one of the study researchers, said, “The resulting robotic insect can achieve the same momentum and height that could be generated during a rapid jump on firm ground-but instead can do so on water”. As the scientists detail today in the journal Science, they first had to work out the mystery of how insects like the water strider manage this magic trick before they could build a bot to mimic it.

However, the general idea of designing robots capable of jumping higher, jumping with more efficiency, interacting with water in ways humans can only dream of doing; this is something that sounds like the design of some futuristic clandestine water war.