Repetitive extreme-acceleration (14-g) spatial jumping with Salto-1P

Abstract

In this work we present a new robotic system, Salto-1P, for exploring extreme jumping locomotion. Salto-1P weighs 0.098 kg, and has an active leg length of 14.4 cm. The robot is able to perform a standing vertical leap of 1.25 m, continuously hop to heights over 1 m, and jump over 2 m horizontally. Salto-1P uses aerodynamic thrusters and an inertial tail to control its attitude in the air. A linearized Raibert step controller was sufficient to enable unconstrained in-place hopping and forwards-backwards locomotion with external position feedback. We present studies of extreme jumping locomotion in which the robot spends just 7.7% of its time on the ground, experiencing accelerations of 14 times earth gravity in its stance phase. An experimentally collected dataset of 772 observed jumps was used to establish the range of achievable horizontal and vertical impulses for Salto-1P.