Robotic jump: motorized device jumps 30 meters high

An article published in the scientific journal at the end of April nature took a new step robotics. In addition to bringing new insights to the understanding of jumping as a form of movement, the scientists demonstrated a jumping robot. It broke all the height records ever achieved by any jumping mechanism, whether man-made or biological.

The jumper reached 33 meters with a take-off speed of 28 meters per second.

The aim of the study “came from a scientific question,” according to engineering professor Elliot Hawkes at the University of California, Santa Barbara (United States), who led the project. In a university statement, he explains that the idea is to “understand what the limits of predicted jumpers are.”

After all, the research says, scientists have explored the limits of biological jump height for centuries, and since Aristotle, engineers have designed jump machines inspired by biological jumpers. In this sense, the work came to fill a gap: to show the differences between jump energy. jumpers biological and engineering scale.

What have scientists discovered about jumps?

Researchers have used biological models to design jumping devices, but it is known that “biological systems can only jump.” “As much energy as their muscles can produce in a single stroke,” says Charles Xaio, one of the authors of the new study.

To circumvent the limitation, engineers often use motors that produce multiple pulses to multiply the amount of energy they can store in the drive springs.

The result of these insights is a small overalls It is 30 cm high and weighs 30 grams, with a significant difference compared to biological jumpers: its spring relative to its engine It is about 100 times larger than any animal system. In addition to being larger, spring force has been increased by the addition of rubber strips that are stretched by pulling a string wrapped around a motor-driven shaft.

ARTICLE – Nature – DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04606-3.