Skinny-legged insects that quietly skate and jump across the surface of the water, called "water striders," were the inspiration for a newly designed robot, developed by scientists at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Seoul National University.

Before they set out to build their robot, the researchers first used slow-motion cameras to film water striders jump. The scientists honed in on the slight curvature at the end of the bugs' legs; the bowed tips seem to enable the creatures' launch, quiet and effortless.

"Water's surface needs to be pressed at the right speed for an adequate amount of time, up to a certain depth, in order to achieve jumping," senior researcher Kyu Jin Cho, director of the Biorobotics Laboratory at Seoul National University, said in a press release. "The water strider is capable of doing all these things flawlessly."

Researchers imagine the robots, which float and jump on water, being deployed by the dozens -- to search for flood victims, for example.