The research of a bionic robot that can walk on water surface based on water strider

Water strider is an insect that can walk on water surface and will not sink using the especial structure of its legs. This paper puts forward a novel bionic robot that can walk on water surface based on the basic principle that water strider can walk on water surface. The robot is driven by min-electromagnet. The driving mechanism of its leg is designed based on slider-crank mechanism and parallel mechanism, and then the driving leg of the robot can achieve near elliptic motion trace on water surface. The analyses on the kinematics and the working space have been done in the paper. The constrained condition on the size of the legs is put forward based on the motion balance of the robot. The force analysis on the parallel mechanism of the robot single leg has been done and the constrained condition that the driving mechanism can drive the robot to move is also put forward. The modeling and the kinematics simulation have been done using the Pro/E and Adams based on the technology of virtual prototype, and it proved that the robot put forward in this paper can achieve near elliptic motion trace on water surface commendably. And the mechanism of the robot is proved to be reasonable and feasible.