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Robots That Bounce on Water
inghamb87 writes "The way water striders walk on water was discovered years ago. The insect uses its long legs to help evenly distribute its tiny body weight. The weight is distributed over a large area so that the fragile skin formed by surface tension supports the bug on the water. However, the ability of water striders to jump onto water without sinking has baffled scientists, until now." If nothing less, you need to see the picture: it's awesome.
Did Jesus use the same technology?
If nothing less, you need to see the picture: it was awesome.
There. Fixed that for you.
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welcome our new water-walking robotic overlords... with some surface-tension reducing soap :) Muahahahahahah!
All my life I've been waiting to see an awesome picture about FRIKKIN ROBOTS THAT BOUNCE on water, and now it's apparently slashdotted! I'm gonna cry now.
P.S. Hey taco if this is just some sick joke, and you gave a busted url, I'll kill you! Robots on water... you don't play around with that!
I got a catholic block.
But I believe we've had a theory for this for awhile now. In August of 2003, MIT published some information on the subject. Here's a link:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2003/robostrider.html
Here's some relevant content from that link:
MIT researchers report in the Aug. 7 issue of Nature that they now understand how the insects known as water striders skim effortlessly across the surface of ponds and oceans.
And:
Using mathematics, high-speed photography and a variety of flow visualization techniques, Bush, mathematics graduate student David L. Hu and mechanical engineering graduate student Brian Chan uncovered the true way in which water striders walk on water.
As the insect rests on the surface, the tips of its thin legs create miniscule valleys. It sculls the middle set of its three pairs of legs like oars, causing the water behind those legs to propel it forward as the surface of the valley rebounds like a trampoline. Although the rowing motion does create tiny waves, "the waves do not play a significant role in the momentum transfer necessary for propulsion," the researchers wrote. "The momentum transfer is primarily in the form of subsurface vortices."
I managed to view the site before it went down in flames under the slashdot effect. The picture was cool, but the article left much to be desired:
How big is the robot?
How much does it weigh?
How fast can it move?
How is it controlled?
What is the range of speeds for this that was mentioned in the article?
They mentioned applying it to sampling water quality, but wouldn't that disrupt the surface tension to sample the water right under the robot?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So Jesus was an insectoid alien or an intergalactic robot? Either way it had to be hard to intelligently design him, or her.
Hmm the text-only version is recommended since the images are loaded from the original site which is undergoing a nuclear meltdown right now.
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/?p=592&strip=1
This one is erroneous in at least one way. It suggests that tiny bubbles trapped in hairs on the bug's legs make it float. Tosh! The bubbles are too small to make it boyant. What the bubbles do is increase the surface area which, in turn, increases the amount of surface tension "skin" that the bug walks on and therefore the carrying capacity.
As most fly fishermen would tell you, surface tension is far stronger than you'd think. Hatching bugs struggle to get through the surface tension which keeps them under the surface. Once they break through they are able to sit and walk quite easily.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Never put a line like this in a /. summary. Do you want Congress to pass a law classifying /. as some kind of cyber-terror weapon? You can almost see smoke coming out of the ground around these poor bastards' data center.
http://freedomsforums.com/viewtopic,p,1696.html
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
The "robot" spreads its weight out using the whole length of its legs in contact with the water. That is nothing like a water strider.
A water strider walks on the **ends** of its legs (feet, if you will). For a far better description see http://www.livescience.com/animals/041103_water_strider.html.
The only similarity is that they both use surface tension.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Coral Cache seems to have a mirror of the image.
http://aycu05.webshots.com.nyud.net:8090/image/34684/2000802596361707173_rs.jpg
The article also links to this one, which has a different water walking robot overlord picture.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/12/07/sciwater107.xml
http://www.enn.com/sci-tech/article/26913
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I remember going to a conference presentation by John Bush back in 2005 which detailed the physics behind water striders. His presentation was very good, and the video footage he presented was absolutely fantastic (see here and here). I think the work referenced in the main article isn't quite as groundbreaking as they'd have you believe. There has been quite a lot of work in this area over the last five years.
I hunted for the video. In my search I came upon the original site, not the article talking about the site.
http://nanolab.me.cmu.edu/projects/waterstrider/
Here is the actual project including how it works (Pizo) photos of both prototypes, the light and dark one, and detail on the robotics in it.
It includes 3 videos including the walking on water video.
The truth shall set you free!
That picture is not actually from the new research, it is from old work at Carnegie-Mellon. Here is a bigger version:
http://nanolab.me.cmu.edu/projects/waterstrider/STRIDE_water_strider_big.jpg
It is part of the work of the NanoRobotics Labaratory at CMU.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.