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posted by Matthew
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Saturday, 14 July 2007 |
"Water striders, insects that walk on the surface of the water, may never set foot on land in their lives..."
"Researchers Yun Seong Song, a PhD student in mechanical engineering, and Metin Sitti, assistant professor in mechanical engineering, both from Carnegie Mellon University, have recently built a robot that mimics the water strider’s natural abilities. The first water striding robot, with an appearance and design closely resembling its insect counterpart, doesn’t ever break the surface tension of the water, and is highly maneuverable."
(Left) Photo of the water strider insect. (Right) Photo of the 1-gram robot on the surface of the water. A, B, C, D: supporting legs;
E and F: actuating legs; G: body with on-board electronics and power source; H: middle actuator; I and J: right and left actuators.
Image credit: Yun Seong Song and Metin Sitti. ©IEEE 2007.
“STRIDE is 10-15 times slower than the insect, since the current prototype is almost 10 times larger than the insect,” Sitti explained. “Therefore, we would miniaturize the STRIDE more. Moreover, we are integrating wireless communication, sensors, and teleoperated and autonomous control capability to the new STRIDE prototypes. Thus, we could deploy tens or hundreds of these robots to the water surface for environment monitoring.” (full article on Psysorg.com) |
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last updated ( Saturday, 14 July 2007 )
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