Robot Walks on Water

Robotics Today (Online Newsletter), October, 2004 by Anonymous

It could be called a mechanical miracle-a robot that walks on water. With inspiration from nature and some help from research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.), a team led by Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh) engineering professor Metin Sitti built a tiny robot that can walk on water, much like the insects known as water skimmers or Jesus bugs.

It is only a prototype, but some researchers imagine that the water-skimming robot could have many uses. With a chemical sensor, it could monitor water supplies for toxins; with a camera it could be a spy or an explorer; with a net or a boom, it could skim contaminants off the top of water. Sitti's robot is little more than a half-inch boxy body made from carbon fibers and eight, 2 in. (5.1 cm) steel-wire legs...

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