It may be difficult for you to float on water. 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. Even for a robot. Especially for a robot. The fact is that insects have been doing this for a long, long time, and we’ve just learned how to mimic this evolutionary marvel with mechanical verve.
NATURE MEETS ROBOT
In order for any object to literally jump from water, it has to apply a relatively large force into a surface that seems designed to give way in fractions of a second. The surface tension of water is so low that as soon as you even begin to push, the damn breaks. How is something so intuitively impossible accomplished?
The answer has been carved by a robot whose existence has been explained in detail in a study published in Science on Thursday. The researchers involved designed the robot so that it applies exactly the amount of force required to lift it into the air, without the excessive force that leaves us flat-footed bipedals treading through it.
INSECT INSPIRES ROBOT
The robot under question is designed to mimic the motion of water striders, a family of insects capable of skimming the surface of water like ice. Needless to say, this requires very delicate attention to motion and the layout of total vector forces. In order to provide these subtle shifts at the precise moments, high-speed cameras and computer models are employed to cease the all downward forces as they are just about to cross the threshold of breaking water’s surface.
GRACEFUL CIRCLES
The relevant researchers have also found that these jumping insects gracefully sweep their legs inward as they jump forward, demonstrating an intuitive understanding of what’s needed to maximize the available force generated when they push off of the water. Martial artists use similar motions for comparable reasons. This is why insects are able to jump just as high off of water as they can off of land, and it’s now a feature of our jumping robots, too.
WHY DO WE NEED JUMPING ROBOTS
To be honest, this invention seems to have only one conceivable purpose, so far: to study and further our understanding of the very insects the machines’ design is based upon. As stated above, the extremely delicate mechanisms required for such maneuvering are supremely fascinating, and humans are a little too big to try 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. And that actually sounds pretty cool.
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