Engineers create a robot that can jump 10 feet high—without legs

Impressed by the actions of a tiny parasitic worm, Georgia Tech engineers have created a 5-inch tender robotic that may soar as excessive as a basketball hoop.

Their machine, a silicone rod with a carbon-fiber backbone, can leap 10 toes excessive regardless that it does not have legs. The researchers made it after watching high-speed video of nematodes pinching themselves into odd shapes to fling themselves ahead and backward.

The researchers describe the soft robot in Science Robotics. They stated their findings may assist develop robots able to leaping throughout numerous terrain, at totally different heights, in a number of instructions.

“Nematodes are wonderful creatures with our bodies thinner than a human hair,” stated Sunny Kumar, lead co-author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher within the Faculty of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE). “They do not have legs however can soar as much as 20 occasions their physique size. That is like me mendacity down and by some means leaping onto a three-story constructing.”

Nematodes, also called spherical worms, are among the many most ample creatures on Earth. They stay within the setting and inside people, bugs, and animals. They’ll trigger sicknesses of their host, which typically will be useful. As an illustration, farmers and gardeners use nematodes as an alternative of pesticides to kill invasive bugs and defend vegetation.

A method they latch onto their host earlier than getting into their our bodies is by leaping. Utilizing high-speed cameras, Victor Oretega-Jimenez—a former Georgia Tech analysis scientist who’s now a school member on the College of California, Berkeley—watched the creatures bend their our bodies into totally different shapes based mostly on the place they wished to go.

To hop backward, nematodes level their head up whereas tightening the midpoint of their physique to create a kink. The form is just like an individual in a squat place. From there, the worm makes use of saved power in its contorted form to propel backward, finish over finish, similar to a gymnast doing a backflip.

To leap ahead, the worm factors its head straight and creates a kink on the other finish of its physique, pointed excessive within the air. The stance is just like somebody getting ready for a standing broad soar. However as an alternative of hopping straight, the worm catapults upward.

“Altering their heart of mass permits these creatures to regulate which method they soar. We’re not conscious of another organism at this tiny scale that may effectively leap in each instructions on the identical top,” Kumar stated.

And so they do it regardless of almost tying their our bodies right into a knot.

“Kinks are usually dealbreakers,” stated Ishant Tiwari, a ChBE postdoctoral fellow and lead co-author of the examine. “Kinked blood vessels can result in strokes. Kinked straws are nugatory. Kinked hoses lower off water. However a kinked nematode shops power that’s used to propel itself within the air.”

After watching their movies, the staff created simulations of the leaping nematodes. Then they constructed tender robots to duplicate the leaping worms’ habits, later reinforcing them with carbon fibers to speed up the jumps.

Kumar and Tiwari work in Affiliate Professor Saad Bhamla’s lab. They collaborated on the undertaking with Oretega-Jimenez and researchers on the College of California, Riverside.

The group discovered that the kinks enable nematodes to retailer extra power with every soar. They quickly launch it—in a tenth of a millisecond—to leap, and so they’re powerful sufficient to repeat the method a number of occasions.

The examine means that engineers may create easy elastic methods made from carbon fiber or different supplies that would face up to and exploit kinks to hop throughout numerous terrain.

“A leaping robotic was not too long ago launched to the moon, and different leaping robots are being created to assist with search and rescue missions, the place they should traverse unpredictable terrain and obstacles,” Kumar stated.

“Our lab continues to find interesting ways that creatures use their unique bodies to do interesting things, then construct robots to imitate them.”