A miniature jumping robot with self-recovery capabilities

Abstract

In nature, many animals are able to jump, upright themselves after landing and jump again. This allows them to move in unstructured and rough terrain. As a further development of our previously presented 7 g jumping robot, we consider various mechanisms enabling it to recover and upright after landing and jump again. After a weighted evaluation of these different solutions, we present a spherical system with a mass of 9.8 g and a diameter of 12 cm that is able to jump, upright itself after landing and jump again. In order to do so autonomously, it has a control unit and sensors to detect its orientation and spring charging state. With its current configuration it can overcome obstacles of 76 cm at a take-off angle of 75°.