Authors: Mirko Kovač Manuel Schlegel JeanChristophe Zufferey Dario Floreano
Publish Date: 2009/12/30
Volume: 28, Issue: 3, Pages: 295-306
Abstract
Jumping is used in nature by many small animals to locomote in cluttered environments or in rough terrain It offers small systems the benefit of overcoming relatively large obstacles at a low energetic cost In order to be able to perform repetitive jumps in a given direction it is important to be able to upright after landing steer and jump again In this article we review and evaluate the uprighting and steering principles of existing jumping robots and present a novel spherical robot with a mass of 14 g and a size of 18 cm that can jump up to 62 cm at a takeoff angle of 75° recover passively after landing orient itself and jump again We describe its design details and fabrication methods characterize its jumping performance and demonstrate the remote controlled prototype repetitively moving over an obstacle course where it has to climb stairs and go through a window See videos 1–4 in the electronic supplementary material
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