Research Of Bionic Water Walking Robot

Bionic water walking robot is a kind of micro-robots that not only can float and move fast on the water mainly by the surface tension, but also can help people accomplish certain missions, of which the prototypes are water insects such as water strider, water spider. Research on bionic water walking robot is a cross advanced project that involves many fields: Bionics, MEMS, Nano-materials, Surface chemistry and so on. This project is still in the starting phase, and is described by professor Metin Sitti at Carnegie Mellon University as"the final challenge of microrobotics". In the future, bionic water walking robot can be used in water quality monitoring, water detection, water rescue and some other fields. Therefore, research on bionic water walking robot not only has important scientific significance, but also has very broad application prospects in both civilian and military.This study on the floating mechanism of the water strider devotes to finding effective calculation methods to estimate the load capacity of bionic water walking robot from the static point. Applying hydrodynamics, the stress situation as water strider and water spider moving on the water is analyzed. Based on the principle of screw, a wireless experimental prototype is developed, and its load capacity, movement and stability are studied.Firstly, single leg model and multi-supporting legs model are built, that are used to derive buoyancy calculating methods. On this basis, the influences of contact angle and the radius of the supporting leg on buoyancy are analyzed.Then, verifying analysis on the theoretical derived from experiments is given to provide reference for estimating the load capacity of bionic water walking robot. Secondly, a flapper model is established to derive the calculating method of the volume of water discharged by analyzing the groove profile derived from the flapper model. From that, the stress situation of legs when the water striders slide on the water is analyzed, that can provide reference for the stress analysis of bionic water walking robot.Finally, based on the calculation method of the supporting leg buoyancy and the force analysis on driven legs, a wireless experimental prototype is developed, of which the load capacity, drive capacity and stability are analyzed. At last, the load capacity and drive capacity are studied experimentally.