Robotics Frontiers

Researchers at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL have developed a jumping robot inspired by the grasshopper. The 5cm model uses a 0.6-gram pager motor and a cam to charge two torsion springs, which trigger a jump from the robot’s 1.3mm carbon rod feet. The 7-gram robot can jump 4.6 feet (1.4 m), more than 27 times its body size, and ten times the distance of any existing jumping robot.