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The scientists
said on Tuesday they had built a robot, dubbed Salto, with
vertical jumping agility like no other machine, able to leap
into the air and then spring off a wall, or perform multiple
vertical jumps consecutively.
In designing mobile robots, researchers sometimes mimic the way
animals move. For example, some robots slither over terrain like
a snake. In this case, the researchers sought to create a robot
that might need to hurdle impediments as it traverses difficult
terrain like the rubble of a building wrecked by an earthquake.
To design Salto, short for "saltatorial locomotion on terrain
obstacles," the University of California, Berkeley, researchers
sought inspiration from one of the animal kingdom's best
leapers.
The galago, or bushbaby, is a relatively small, typically
night-active and tree-dwelling primate. It is an agile leaper
and can hop high in the air on two legs while on the ground. The
goal was to build a robot better at leaping than any other.
"We looked to biology for inspiration because it's fair to say
that animals can outclass any robot when it comes to jumping,"
said robotics researcher Duncan Haldane, who led the study
published in the journal Science Robotics.
"Our goal was to have a search-and-rescue robot small enough to
not disturb the rubble further (and) move quickly across the
many kinds of rubble produced by collapsed buildings."
The galago jumps so well because it stores energy in its tendons
when it is in a crouched position and can then spring into the
air. The researchers adapted that into Salto by using a
motorized, spring-loaded leg mechanism that lets the robot get
into the same type of crouched position.
Salto weighs 3.5 ounces (100 grams), is about 10 inches (26 cm)
tall and can jump 3.3 feet (1 meter) high. It achieves 78
percent of the galago's vertical jumping prowess.
"We're particularly interested these days in seeing if we can
not just match but exceed the performance of animals," said
UC-Berkeley electrical engineering and computer sciences
professor Ronald Fearing, who heads the lab where Salto was
developed.
"The more we understand about how animals move and how to use
the available engineering technologies, the closer we can get to
that point."
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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