{"id":90143,"date":"2025-09-28T04:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T04:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/90143\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T04:45:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T04:45:07","slug":"engineers-create-soft-robots-that-can-literally-walk-on-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/90143\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineers Create Soft Robots That Can Literally Walk on Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"HydroBuckler<\/a>The walking mechanism of the \u201cwater spider\u201d robot HydroBuckler prototype shown here is driven by \u201cleg\u201d buckling. Credit: Baoxing Xu, UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science<\/p>\n

Scientists have developed HydroSpread, a novel technique for building soft robots on water, with wide-ranging possibilities in robotics, healthcare, and environmental monitoring.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Picture a miniature robot, no larger than a leaf, gliding effortlessly across the surface of a pond, much like a water strider. In the future, machines of this scale could be deployed to monitor pollution, gather water samples, or explore flooded zones too hazardous for people.<\/p>\n

At the University of Virginia\u2019s School of Engineering and Applied Science<\/a>, mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Baoxing Xu is working on a way to make such devices a reality. His team\u2019s latest study, published in Science Advances, unveils HydroSpread, a fabrication method unlike any before it. The approach enables researchers to create soft, buoyant machines directly on water, a breakthrough with applications that could range from medical care to consumer electronics to environmental monitoring.<\/p>\n

Previously, producing the thin and flexible films essential for soft robotics required building them on solid surfaces such as glass. The fragile layers then had to be lifted off and placed onto water, a tricky procedure that frequently led to tearing and material loss.<\/p>\n

HydroSpread sidesteps this issue by letting liquid itself serve as the \u201cworkbench.\u201d Droplets of liquid polymer could naturally spread into ultrathin, uniform sheets on the water\u2019s surface. With a finely tuned laser, Xu\u2019s team can then carve these sheets into complex patterns \u2014 circles, strips, even the UVA logo \u2014 with remarkable precision.<\/p>\n

From Films to Moving Machines<\/p>\n

Using this approach, the researchers built two insect-like prototypes:<\/p>\n