If a pancake could dream, it would long for legs so it could jump off your breakfast plate in pursuit of a better, unchewed life.
It turns out that legs are not necessary for something as flat as a flapjack. A group of scientists have designed a tortilla-shaped robot that can jump several times per second and higher than seven times its body height. The robot, which is the size of a tennis ball and weighs about the same as a paper clip,nimbly performs these feats without any semblance of feet. Their research was published in a journal.
The new robot is an important contribution to the soft robotics field, according to Shuguang Li, a roboticist at Harvard who was not involved with the research.
Terrestrial robots are those that are at home on the ground rather than in air or water. The ability to jump can help a robot navigate rough terrain, but sometimes it is more efficient for a robot to jump over an obstacle than to go around it, according to an email from a researcher.
Although jumping can offer some robots a competitive edge, engineering that ability has been a challenge for researchers. Soft robots that store energy can perform a jump very frequently. Some lightweight soft robots that do not store energy can hop a lot but can't jump high enough to cross an obstacle like a curb.
The ideal robot would be able to jump high and far. Dr. Chen said that the two pursuits were not in line with each other. A tiny robot needs a lot of energy to jump higher and farther, and it takes a long time to release it.
There is a video
Variations of the jumping robot attempt to jump as far as possible, some more capably than others.
The researchers looked to the gall midge, a fly that can fly 30 times as long as its loglike bodies. Dr. Chen said that most creatures need feet to jump. The maggot has a ring on its head that is stuck to its rear with sticky hairs, and then it squeezes fluid toward one end of its body. The fluid builds up pressure and causes the fly to soar.
The robot does not have the same body shape as a gall midge, but it does jump like one. The front pouch is filled with liquid and the rear pouch is filled with air. The robot uses static electricity to drive the flow of liquid to cause the body to bend and generate force with the ground, resulting in a jump. The air pouch helps the robot maintain a stable position while jumping and landing.
The design allows the robot to jump 7.68 times its body height and has a continuous jumping speed of six body lengths per second, which is very impressive.
The robot was able to jump rapidly and continuously. Is it possible that it could cross obstacles? The researchers put the tiny robot through a number of tests to find out if it could do anything.
The robot had to cross a lot of obstacles. It had to jump across a round step five millimeters tall and traverse an empty ring eight millimeters tall, monumental barriers for a four-millimeter-tall robot with a body like a pancake. The acrobat passed all of the tests easily.
The fastest turning speed of any soft jumping robot is around 136 degrees per second, according to Dr. Chen. A senior research scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, who was not involved with the research, said that the robot can steer itself by continuously turning.
The robot is powered by external power. It will be a challenge to keep the robot small and lightweight, but the researchers would like to make the robot wireless in the future.
Dr. Li wondered if adding an onboard power source would be a challenge for this tiny soft jumper.
The researchers want the tiny robot to be able to detect pollutants in buildings. Dr. Li suggested that the robot could be used on search-and-rescue missions for trapped people or animals, as it can travel through small spaces in disaster areas. The robot is small and cheap. Dr. Li said it would cost a few dollars to build.
The robot is currently confined to Earth, but Dr. Hu thinks it might be a good idea to explore another planet. Dr. Hu said that the materials needed to build this robot would need to survive and function in extraterrestrial environments.
If this is true, the robot could jump over craters on the moon or Mars, going where no pancake has gone before.
