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Robots That Bounce on Water

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Dec 10, 2007 12:24 PM
from the something-about-tigger-goes-here dept.
Robotics Science
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.
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Submission: Robots can now bounce on water by inghamb87 (1127235)
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  • Jesus (Score:5, Funny)

    by hernyo (770695) <laszlo.hermann@gmail.com> on Monday December 10 2007, @12:28PM (#21644201)
    Did Jesus use the same technology?

    • Re:Jesus (Score:5, Funny)

      by pushing-robot (1037830) on Monday December 10 2007, @12:30PM (#21644243)
      No, that was Mecha-Jesus.

    • Re:Jesus (Score:5, Funny)

      by Kranfer (620510) on Monday December 10 2007, @12:30PM (#21644245) Homepage Journal
      As a jew, I am forced to say yes... along with his Jedi powers of turning water into wine and healing as well. ::smirks::
      • Are you saying that these are talents jews have, including yourself and Jesus? Cool! By converting to judaism, can others get these talents, or does it only pass from the mother? Right now all I can do is turn wine into water. That's what I love about diversity: you get to learn all sorts of interesting things about other cultures and races. I wonder what other powers people are keeping secret...

        • By converting to judaism, can others get these talents, or does it only pass from the mother?
          I think the prerequisites for that prestige class are a lot more strict... Besides the (racial?) requirements, you probably need some divine feats... not to mention the strict alignment restrictions...

          All in all, you are better off taking a few levels of sorcerer...
          • But, but, Mel Brooks said that one in ten Jews is really funny.

            (love the GOV coat)

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Gilmoure (18428)
                In Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks (playing the governor) wears a coat with GOV on the back. In Hebrew, Gov mean back. Funniest thing I've ever seen.

      • As a jew, I am forced to say yes... along with his Jedi powers of turning water into wine and healing as well. ::smirks::

        Last I checked, Jesus was Jewish...

        • "Last I checked, Jesus was Jewish..."

          What? You actually walked up to him asked him to 'whip it out' and verified his circumcision?

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by pnewhook (788591)

            I think his point is that as a Jew, implying that Jesus' miracles were "mind-tricks" at best and total BS at worst beats the alternative that they actually killed the Messiah.

            Sorry for the totally off topic post but that kinda drives me crazy when Christians blame the Jews for killing Jesus. Of course they killed him because they were ALL Jewish - including Jesus. The Jewish leaders had him killed for sacrelige, very much like the Christian leaders in the dark ages had fellow Christians killed for simila

        • I do keep hollywood in mind. Since Jesus used this technology, I now expect a "When Jesus Attacks" to be put on the air, since there is currently a writers strike. Boards below the water is so low tech... a Mech Warrior Jesus Christ is much more interesting to be made into a movie...
    • No, but politicians often use this technology to avoid submersion in their own bullshit.

  • Grammar!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by dsginter (104154) on Monday December 10 2007, @12:29PM (#21644213)
    If nothing less, you need to see the picture: it was awesome.

    There. Fixed that for you.

  • I for one... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bazman (4849) on Monday December 10 2007, @12:29PM (#21644225) Journal
    welcome our new water-walking robotic overlords... with some surface-tension reducing soap :) Muahahahahahah!

    • Re:I for one... (Score:5, Informative)

      by dsginter (104154) on Monday December 10 2007, @12:46PM (#21644513)
      with some surface-tension reducing soap

      I'm gonna take a guess to say that you learned this from Mr. Wizard [mrwizardstudios.com]?

      I remember this episode well - it is a simple but very awe-inspiring (at least from a geek's perspective) experiment. It goes like this:

            1) Fill a cookie tray with water
            2) Pepper the top of the water in order to *see* the movements of the surface tension
            3) Carefully place a small amount of soap in the center of the tray
            4) Watch the pepper scatter to the edges of the pan as the tension breaks

      If you have a kid, then you need to go do this experiment with them NOW!

      RIP Don Herbert [npr.org] - you are one of the main reasons that I am a geek today.
      • IIRC, he used lycopodium powder on the surface. Not quite sure why that stuck in my brain for the last 20 years.

        And yes, I think a lot of us owe our geekness to Mr Wizard. Off the top of my head, I remember the water displacement in the blue barrel with the kid who was freezing, the snow melting in the microwave, the telescope, the papercutting and jumping through it, the illusion of fading into a skeleton, and one of those shorts in it where they heated the pebbles to provide better traction on ice.
        • The one that always stuck with me was the water pressure/pump experiment. Trying to pull water up as many stories as you could with a giant straw!
      • Alternate experiment:

        Create a "boat" out of aluminum foil. Shape it like a square with a triangle appended to one edge, and fold slightly. Cut a small slit on the back of it (opposite the point), and place carefully on the surface of the pan filled with water. Carefully place a small drop of dish soap onto the slit, and watch the surface tension propel your boat forward!
      • Whew. I thought you were going to say that you put a water strider on a pan of water and then sank it. I was all ready to call PETA, make popcorn and watch the fun.
  • 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!

  • The Picture Might Be Worth It... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by javelinco (652113) on Monday December 10 2007, @12:35PM (#21644317) Journal
    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 [mit.edu]

    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."

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That's how they walk on water. This is how they jump.
      • Oh! Gotcha. Unfortunately, I'm still trying to get the article to load, and I must have misread the summary.

        Thanks.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by javelinco (652113)
          Article Content (even Google cache is REALLY slow):

          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.

          A team of researchers at Seoul National University, led by Ho-Young Kim and Duck-Gyu L

  • Rather short on information... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by damn_registrars (1103043) on Monday December 10 2007, @12:35PM (#21644321) Journal
    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?
  • So Jesus was an insectoid alien or an intergalactic robot? Either way it had to be hard to intelligently design him, or her.

  • Baffles science? (Score:5, Informative)

    by EmbeddedJanitor (597831) on Monday December 10 2007, @12:38PM (#21644389)
    Here's a related link: http://www.livescience.com/animals/041103_water_strider.html [livescience.com]

    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.

  • If nothing less, you need to see the picture: it's awesome.

    If you're one of the four people who got to see the picture before it became Slashdotted....
  • Here's the Telegraph story linked in the blog entry we just hosed:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/12/07/sciwater107.xml [telegraph.co.uk]

    Yes, it's dated July 12, 2007. Yes, you must be new here.

  • Never, ever, EVER do that! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Un pobre guey (593801) on Monday December 10 2007, @12:47PM (#21644525) Homepage
    If nothing less, you need to see the picture: it's awesome.

    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.

  • (*) It will be fought by entrenched fishing interests

  • Mirror / Additional Content (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Coral Cache seems to have a mirror of the image.
    http://aycu05.webshots.com.nyud.net:8090/image/34684/2000802596361707173_rs.jpg [nyud.net]

    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 [telegraph.co.uk]
  • I remember going to a conference presentation by John Bush [mit.edu] 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 [mit.edu] and here [mit.edu]). 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.
  • well, bounce my shiny metal ass

  • Bigger version of the "awesome" picture (Score:4, Informative)

    by SiliconEntity (448450) on Monday December 10 2007, @02:11PM (#21645779)
    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 [cmu.edu]

    It is part of the work of the NanoRobotics Labaratory [cmu.edu] at CMU.

    • This is a crock of shit (Score:4, Informative)

      by EmbeddedJanitor (597831) on Monday December 10 2007, @12:53PM (#21644679)
      This is not science. This is bullshit.

      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 [livescience.com].

      The only similarity is that they both use surface tension.

      • Re:This is a crock of shit (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Chris Burke (6130) on Monday December 10 2007, @05:24PM (#21648547) Homepage
        This is not science. This is bullshit.

        Of course it's fucking science, even if it isn't exactly what you hoped it would be. What makes this "not science"?!

        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.

        So? So our robots aren't nearly as light as a water strider (I guarantee you the robot pictured weights a lot more than 15x a water strider), and require much greater surface area to stay afloat. Also we can't create legs with the tiny micro-hairs that allow the strider to stay afloat and jump on water so easily. What do you know, nature still wins, and we still have a lot of work to do to duplicate it.

        If that's the standard, pretty much all science is bullshit.

        The only similarity is that they both use surface tension.

        Well according to your link water striders don't even rely on surface tension.

        Nevertheless: Water-walking robot. Some people would think that's cool. But that would be those of us who appreciate advancements in the state of the art, not those who think anything less than the end goal is a 'crock of shit'.

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