Engineering and TechnologyNATURE COMMUNICATIONS

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.... show more

General Summary Metrics

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

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27265-w

Explore these studies to deepen your understanding

Adjacent work that informs or extends this paper's methodology and findings.

Engineering and Technology

Focused ultrasound enables selective actuation and Newton-level force output of untethered soft robots

B. Hao, X. Wang, et al.

Engineering and Technology

Rapid custom prototyping of soft poroelastic biosensor for simultaneous epicardial recording and imaging

B. Kim, A. H. Soepriatna, et al.

Education

A rapid realist review of universal interventions to promote inclusivity and acceptance of diverse sexual and gender identities in schools

M. Schlief, T. Stefanidou, et al.

Environmental Studies and Forestry

Rapid differentiation of soil and root microbiomes in response to plant composition and biodiversity in the field

H. M. Burrill, G. Wang, et al.

Listen, Learn & Level Up

Over 10,000 hours of research content in 25+ fields, available in 22+ languages.

No more digging through PDFs, just hit play and absorb the world's latest research in your language, on your time.

listen to research audio papers with researchbunny