Engineering: Outjumping the highest jumping robots

 
A paper reporting on a robot that can jump up to a height of 100 meters or more, which is more than 30 times the body length,Nature Will be published in.This robot has a higher jumping ability than the artificial jumping devices and the highest jumping creatures reported so far.The findings demonstrate that engineeringly crafted jumping performance has reached a new level, with the potential to change the way jumping robots are used.

Jumping devices designed by engineers over the last few decades have often been imitations of jumping creatures or devices inspired by them.The maximum height at which an animal jumps is constrained by the amount of work its muscles produce in a single movement.On the other hand, engineering devices that use motors that store energy when strokes and rotations are repeated, such as ratchet motors and rotary motors, can leap much higher.

This time, Elliot Hawkes and colleagues designed and built a special engineering robot that is about 30 centimeters high, weighs 30 grams, and can jump to a height of 32.9 meters.The robot consists of a rotary motor to increase the workload and a spring and rubber band specially selected to allow energy storage in the system. Hawkes et al. State that the findings change the implications of jumping as a means of transportation, and change how and where jumps are used.Jumping robots may be able to overcome obstacles that only flying robots could avoid on Earth and collect underground images.Also, if a jumping robot jumps on a moon whose surface gravity is weaker than the earth, it can reach a height of 125 meters and can move about 1 kilometers in one jump, which may be useful for exploratory exploration of the terrain. not.

 
* This article is reprinted from "Nature Japan Featured Highlights".
Reprinted from: "Engineering: A new jumping robot that breaks the record'