Grasshopper Robot Sets High-Jump Record

Taking its inspiration from the grasshopper, a tiny two-legged robot that stores elastic energy in springs has leaped 27 times its own height, smashing the record of 17 times set by a previous robot. Its creators hope that swarms of such hopping robots could spread out to explore disaster areas, or even the surfaces of other planets. The robot is only 5 centimetres tall, and weighs just 7 grams. A motor designed to power the vibration unit of a pager drives a system of gears that gradually wind two metal springs (see image, right). When they are fully wound and then released, they straighten two metal legs that propel the robot upwards. The jumping robot was developed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland.