Robot Walks on Water 273
gmletzkojr writes "Yahoo! News has a story about a robot built to walk on water, much like small insects, bugs, and of course, Jesus. The current robot is only a prototype, but more 'useful' robots are already being imagined." This puts into practice what scientists learned just last year.
Re:Pictures? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.me.cmu.edu/faculty1/sitti/na
Still trying to figure out why this is a useful invention though...
BBC article with pictures... (Score:5, Informative)
They'd already put this in practice last year! (Score:5, Informative)
capsula? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh -- it looks like they're still being made... I guess it's time to find out my Visa's credit limit.
RoboStrider '03 (Score:3, Informative)
I may as well nitpick your nitpick. (Score:3, Informative)
Spider. Centipede. Woodlouse. Met any of these?
IIRC, the major features of insects are having six legs and a distinct head, thorax, and abdomen. Many small insect-like creatures don't have these.
There is an order of true bugs in the insect kingdom, but that's only one of the meanings of the word, and certainly the less used.
Oh, and nits aren't bugs, either. Formally, they're the eggs of lice, not the lice themselves.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
The Carnegie Mellon site with Pictures (Score:5, Informative)
The CM NanoRobotics home page is here [cmu.edu].
Both have pictures of the bot and many others.
Re:I may as well nitpick... (Score:3, Informative)
The word 'bug' is a slang word, a colloquialism. It can be any unseemly crawly thing, from insects to arachnids (spiders, scorpions) to worms to germs (the flu bug) to crustacea (mud bugs). Flaws in designs are also regularly called bugs.
The word 'insect' refers to a specific Linnaean branch of taxonomy, the class of Insectidae. Members of this class, at adult stage, have a three-segment body, six legs, antennae, and functional or non-functional wings. A spider is not an insect, for example, but a walking-stick is.