A photo of a new high-speed amphibious robot developed by Israeli researchers. (Ben Gurion University via Xinhua)

 
Israeli researchers have developed a new high-speed amphibious robot, Ben Gurion University (BGU) in southern Israel said on Tuesday.

The new robot, named "Amphistar," swims and runs on top of water at high speeds and crawls on difficult terrain, according to BGU.

It uses a sprawling mechanism inspired by cockroaches, and is designed to run on water at high speeds like the basilisk lizard.

The researchers said that the robot can be used for agricultural, search and rescue and excavation applications, where both crawling and swimming are required.

The palm-size robot is a wheeled robot fitted with four propellers underneath whose axes can be tilted using the sprawl mechanism.

The propellers act as wheels over ground and as fins to propel the robot over water while swimming and running on water at a speed of 1.5 meters per second.

Two air tanks enable it to float and transition smoothly between high speeds when hovering on water to lower speeds swimming, and from crawling to swimming and vice versa.

The robot can also crawl over gravel, grass and concrete and can attain speeds of 3.6 meters per second.

"Our future research will focus on the scalability of the robot and on underwater swimming," the researchers said.