Hopping robot has been developed by many institute researchers. The hopping robot required more power for their operation. For this reason, they cannot use in many applications. But the Disney researcher developed a new technique and they make world’s first tetherless hopping robot. This new development removes the on-board power requirement. They developed the tetherless one-legged hopping robot, which is battery operated.
The robot is about a foot long & less than five pound weight. As now robot can balance itself up to 7 seconds or 19 hops, but researchers try to increase the hopping time of robot by increasing on-board battery life.
Photo of assembled hopping robot
Joohyung Kim, associate research scientist at Disney Research, said that, “one-legged robots can only move by hopping, freeing them of tethers would open up new, non-research uses. The highly efficient leg modules also can be combined to create multi-legged robots.”
Yamane said that, “Many hoppers have been hydraulic devices. But hydraulic actuation requires off-board motors and is energetic enough to pose issues outside of a controlled laboratory environment.”
To gain high speed & high power actuation electrical power is necessary. For this researchers designed a linear elastic actuator in parallel to serve as leg. In their research paper, researchers wrote that,” In the future, we plan to implement many of the previously proposed changes. Furthermore, we plan to redesign the LEAP mechanism to be more modular and compact for use in a multi-legged robot.”
Source : https://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/hoppingbot/