CMU Lizardbot Runs On Water
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Thursday, 2 of April , 2009 at 12:43 am
Carnegie Mellon’s Nanorobotics Lab seems to have something against boats. I have no idea why. But because of this, they’ve been producing some sweet robots that can get across water without having to worry about floating, like this water strider. More recently, they designed a robot based on the basilisk lizard, which has the unusual ability to run across water. They do this by using the large surface area of their feet to trap a pocket of air between their feet and the water surface, which helps keep them buoyant while moving:
The advantage of this method of locomotion is that the lizard (and the robot) doesn’t have to deal with as much drag, since it’s not pushing through the water like a boat does. Also, their legs are functional on both water and land (in principle, the researchers are currently working on this). This robot already has onboard power, but the next step is figuring out some way of steering the thing that doesn’t involve a bunch of ropes and a human.
[ CMU Nanorobotics ]
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Category: Biorobotics, Research
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