Get the Popular Science<\/strong> daily newsletter \ud83d\udca1<\/p>\n Breakthroughs and DIY tips, six days a week.<\/p>\n To move on Mars, you have to beat the sand.<\/p>\n It always gets you eventually.<\/p>\n German engineers built a ground rover that actually swims<\/em>. No wheels getting stuck. Just pure forward motion, mimicking the African sandfish<\/strong> (Scincus scincus<\/em> ). It is a lizard. It burrows into the Sahara like it is underwater. One of nature\u2019s weirdest tricks might just save our next planet-hopper.<\/p>\n A video dropped this week by the University of W\u00fcrsburg. The thing looks like a silver mini-fridge. It sits on a test floor built to mimic the Red Planet. It doesn’t roll. It undulates. Each of its four wheels carves a figure-eight pattern, cutting into the dust, pushing hard, then slicing back the way it came.<\/p>\n “The wheels mimic the animal’s [sandfish’s] characteristic interaction with the ground.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Amenosis Lopez from W\u00fcrzburg said the robot leaves sinusoidal tracks. It generates longitudinal force. And lateral. It just moves.<\/p>\n Most of us think space rovers look like WALL-E<\/strong>. Big tracks. Round wheels. Solid engineering.<\/p>\n Wrong for this terrain.<\/p>\n Sand is a liar. It acts solid one second, liquid the next. Add in the slopes, the uneven ground, the sudden slick patches… a rover gets stuck. It sinks. It waits. Nature solved this millions of years ago with the sandfish. Despite the name, it is not a fish. It is a skink.<\/p>\n On the surface, it looks normal. Scrabbling with tiny legs.<\/p>\n Underground, it is a different beast. X-rays show the lizard waving its body. Powerful thrust. Overcoming drag. It literally oscillates through the dirt like a trout in water. Georgia Tech engineers watched this and got busy. In 2011 they built their own robot version. They found the lizard’s wedged head isn’t just cute. It creates lift. It helps the creature swim easier.<\/p>\n The new W\u00fcrzburg robot beats standard wheels. Hands down.<\/p>\n Where round wheels wobble and slide, these oscillating wheels hold the line. They stay stable. But it wasn’t easy. Early prototypes were too heavy. They just sank. Poof. Gone. The team went back, widened the wheels, stripped the mass. Lighter means higher.<\/p>\n Will NASA adopt these?<\/p>\n Probably not tomorrow.<\/p>\n We still need more control. Real-world slip is messy. What about cargo? What about heavy science instruments? There are variables. Many of them. But the design works. It is a testament to evolutionary genius. We are finally paying attention to how animals survive the harsh stuff.<\/p>\n The sand knows what to do. Maybe our machines are just catching up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Lizard That Inspire Get the Popular Science daily newsletter \ud83d\udca1 Breakthroughs and DIY tips, six days a week. To move on Mars, you have to beat the sand. It always gets you eventually. German engineers built a ground rover that actually swims. No wheels getting stuck. Just pure forward motion, mimicking the African sandfish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Why wheels fail<\/h3>\n
Sink or Swim<\/h3>\n