New Jumping Device Achieves the Tallest Height of Any Known Jumper
hubie writes:
New jumping device achieves the tallest height of any known jumper, engineered or biological
A mechanical jumper developed by UC Santa Barbara engineering professor Elliot Hawkes and collaborators is capable of achieving the tallest height-roughly 100 feet (30 meters)-of any jumper to date, engineered or biological. The feat represents a fresh approach to the design of jumping devices and advances the understanding of jumping as a form of locomotion.
[...] Biological systems have long served as the first and best models for locomotion, and that has been especially true for jumping, defined by the researchers as a "movement created by forces applied to the ground by the jumper, while maintaining a constant mass." Many engineered jumpers have focused on duplicating the designs provided by evolution, and to great effect.
[...] "Biological systems can only jump with as much energy as they can produce in a single stroke of their muscle," Xaio said. Thus, the system is limited in the amount of energy it can give to pushing the body off the ground, and the jumper can jump only so high.
[...] "This difference between energy production in biological versus engineered jumpers means that the two should have very different designs to maximize jump height," Xiao said. "Animals should have a small spring-only enough to store the relatively small amount of energy produced by their single muscle stroke-and a large muscle mass. In contrast, engineered jumpers should have as large a spring as possible and a tiny motor."
[...] This design and the ability to exceed the limits set by biological designs sets the stage for the reimagining of jumping as an efficient form of machine locomotion: Jumping robots could get places where only flying robots currently reach.
[...] "We calculated that the device should be able to clear 125 meters in height while jumping half of a kilometer forward on the moon," said Hawkes, pointing out that gravity is 1/6 of that on Earth and that there is basically no air drag. "That would be one giant leap for engineered jumpers."
Hopping robots have been shown to be effective for exploring.
Journal Reference:
Elliot Hawkes et al, Engineered jumpers overcome biological limits via work multiplication, Nature (2022).
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04606-3
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