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Legless soft robots capable of rapid, continuous, and steered jumping

Engineering and Technology

Legless soft robots capable of rapid, continuous, and steered jumping

R. Chen, Z. Yuan, et al.

Explore the groundbreaking research by Rui Chen and colleagues on a tethered, legless soft jumping robot that harnesses electrohydrostatic actuation to leap over obstacles with agility and speed. This extraordinary robot, weighing just 1.1g, astounds with its ability to jump 7.68 times its body height and navigate terrains rapidly.

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~3 min • Beginner • English
Abstract
Jumping is an important locomotion function to extend navigation range, overcome obstacles, and adapt to unstructured environments. However, few soft jumping robots achieve rapid continuous jumping with controlled turning for obstacle crossing. Here, we present an electrohydrostatically driven tethered legless soft jumping robot based on a soft electrohydrostatic bending actuator (sEHBA) that enables rapid, continuous, and steered jumping. This 1.1 g, 6.5 cm robot achieves a jumping height of 7.68 body heights and a continuous forward jumping speed of 6.01 body lengths per second. By combining two actuator units, the robot achieves rapid turning at 138.4°/s. The robots demonstrate skipping across diverse obstacles. This work establishes a foundation for electrohydrostatic actuation in soft robots for agile, fast multimodal locomotion.
Publisher
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Published On
Dec 07, 2021
Authors
Rui Chen, Zean Yuan, Jianglong Guo, Long Bai, Xinyu Zhu, Fuqiang Liu, Huayan Pu, Liming Xin, Yan Peng, Jun Luo, Li Wen, Yu Sun
Tags
soft robotics
electrohydrostatic actuation
robot locomotion
jumping robots
agile navigation
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