Engineers have unlocked the design for a record-breaking robot that could jump twice as high as Big Ben

Engineers at the University of Manchester have revealed the secret to designing a robot capable of jumping 120 meters – higher than any other jumping robot designed to date.

Using a combination of mathematics, computer simulations and laboratory experiments, scientists have discovered how to design a robot with the optimal size, shape and arrangement of its parts, allowing it to jump high enough to clear obstacles many times its own size.

The current highest jumping robot can reach up to 33 meters, which is 110 times its own size. Now scientists have designed a robot that could jump more than 120 meters in the air – or 200 meters on the moon, more than twice the height of Big Ben.

Progress, published in the journal Mechanism and theory of machinesit will revolutionize applications from planetary exploration to disaster rescue to monitoring dangerous or inaccessible spaces.

Co-author Dr. John Lo, Research Associate in Space Robotics at the University of Manchester, said: “Robots have traditionally been designed to move by rolling on wheels or using their legs to walk, but jumping provides an efficient way to travel over places where the terrain is very uneven or where , where there are many obstacles, for example inside caves, through forests, over boulders or even on the surface of other planets in space.

“While jumping robots already exist, there are several major challenges in designing these jumping machines, the main one being jumping high enough to clear large and complicated obstacles. Our design would dramatically improve the energy efficiency and performance of spring jumping.” robots.”

Researchers have found that traditional jumping robots often take off before fully releasing their stored spring energy, resulting in inefficient jumps and limiting their maximum height. They also found that they were wasting energy moving from side to side or turning instead of moving straight up.

New structures must focus on eliminating these unwanted movements while maintaining the necessary structural strength and stiffness.

Co-author Dr. Ben Parslew, associate professor of aerospace engineering, said: “There were so many questions to be answered and decisions to be made about the shape of the robot, such as whether it should have legs to bounce off the ground like a kangaroo. or should it be more like an artificial piston with a giant spring Should it be a simple symmetrical shape like a diamond or should it be something more curved and organic?

“After that decision we have to think about the size of the robot – small robots are light and agile, but then big robots can carry bigger motors for stronger jumps, so is the best option somewhere in the middle?

“Our structural redesign redistributes the mass of the robot components upwards and narrows the structure downwards. The lighter prism-shaped legs and the use of springs that only expand are all features that we have shown to improve the performance, and most importantly, the energy efficiency of the jumping robot .”

Although the researchers found a practical design option to significantly improve performance, their next goal is to control the direction of the jumps and figure out how to use the kinetic energy from landing to increase the number of jumps the robot can make in one charge. They will also explore more compact designs for space missions that would make the robot easier to transport and deploy to the moon.