A miniature 7g jumping robot

Kovač, Mirko; Fuchs, Moshe B.; Guignard, A.; Zufferey, Jean-Christophe; Floreano, Dario

doi:10.1109/robot.2008.4543236

Cited by 262 publications

(182 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…For small jumping systems it is most beneficial to first slowly charge an elastic element and then use the legs as a catapult to jump (Roberts and Marsh, 2003;Alexander, 1988;Burrows, 2003;Scarfogliero et al, 2007;Kovac et al, 2008). This way of jumping is used by small animals such as desert locusts (Bennet-Clark, 1975), fleas (Gronenberg, 1996) and frogs (Roberts and Marsh, 2003).…”

Section: Jumping Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The working principle in our design is to first charge a torsion spring and then release its energy to quickly extend a four bar leg linkage to perform the jumping movement, as illustrated in figure 3. This same principle has been implemented for our previously presented minimalist jumping robot (Kovac et al, 2008). The basic components are the four bar leg mechanism that is connected to the body on the ground link (a) and is actuated via the input link (b) using a torsion spring (c).…”

Section: Jumping Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The jumping mechanism (figure 7) is a further development of our previously presented minimalist jumping robot (Kovac et al, 2008). As described in section 2.1 the basic principle is to charge a torsion spring and release its energy to extend a four bar leg linkage to jump (figure 3).…”

Section: Jumping Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A jump can be executed every 3s with a power consumption of 350mW. The reader may be referred to (Kovac et al, 2008) for a more detailed explanation and characterization of the jumping principles used. The materials used are aluminum 7075 for the frame and the main leg, carbon prepreg rods for the legs, Polyoxymethylene plastic (POM) for the gears and cam and polyaryletheretherketone (PEEK) for the connection pieces on the legs and the frame.…”

Section: Jumping Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In robotics, several small jumping robots have been presented so far (Scarfogliero et al, 2007;Lambrecht et al, 2005;Sugiyama et al, 2005;Kovac et al, 2008) but theses systems are not able to upright and steer. In this article we focus on uprighting and steering for jumping robots and we present a novel spherical system with a mass of only 14g (figure 1) that is able to jump, upright itself after landing, steer and jump again.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Steerable miniature jumping robot

et al. 2009

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Jumping is used in nature by many small animals to locomote in cluttered environments or in rough terrain. It offers small systems the benefit of overcoming relatively large obstacles at a low energetic cost. In order to be able to perform repetitive jumps in a given direction, it is important to be able to upright after landing, steer and jump again. In this article, we review and evaluate the uprighting and steering principles of existing jumping robots and present a novel spherical robot with a mass of 14g and a size of 18cm that can jump up to 62cm at a take-off angle of 75 • , recover passively after landing, orient itself, and jump again. We describe its design details and fabrication methods, characterize its jumping performance, and demonstrate the remote

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Section: Jumping Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Jumping Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Jumping Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Jumping Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Steerable miniature jumping robot

et al. 2009

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Using Explosions to Power a Soft Robot

et al. 2013

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This manuscript describes the use of explosions to power a soft robot-one composed solely of organic elastomers (e.g., silicones). The robot has three pneumatic actuators (pneu-nets) in a tripedal configuration. Explosion of a stoichiometric mixture of methane and oxygen within the microchannels making up the actuators produced hot gas that rapidly inflated the pneu-nets, and caused the robot to launch itself vertically from a flat surface (e.g., to jump). A soft flap embedded in the pneu-net acted as the valve of a passive exhaust system, and allowed multiple sequential actuations. The flame and temperature increase from the explosions are short-lived, and do not noticeably damage the robots over dozens of actuation cycles.1 Soft robots have emerged as a new set of machines capable of manipulation [1][2][3][4] and locomotion. [5][6][7][8] Pneumatic expansion of a network of microchannels (pneu-nets) fabricated in organic elastomers, using low-pressure air (<10 psi; 0.7 atm; 71 kPa), provides a simple method of achieving complex movements: [1, 5] grasping and walking. Despite their advantages (simplicity of fabrication, actuation, and control; low cost; light weight), pneu-nets have the disadvantage that actuation using them is slow, in part because the viscosity of air limits the rate at which the gas can be delivered through tubes to fill and expand the microchannels. Here we demonstrate the rapid actuation of pneu-nets using a chemical reaction (the combustion of methane) to generate explosive bursts of pressure.Although the combustion of hydrocarbons is ubiquitous in the actuation of hard systems (e.g., in the metal cylinder of a diesel or spark-ignited engine [9]), it has not been used to power soft machines. Here, we demonstrate that explosive chemical reactions [10] producing pulses of high temperature gas for pneu-net actuation provides simple, rapid, co-located power generation, and enables motion, in soft robots. In particular, we used the explosive combustion of hydrocarbons triggered by an electrical spark to cause a soft robot to "jump" (a gait previously only demonstrated for hard systems [11][12][13][14][15][16]).We fabricated a tripedal robot ( Fig. 1; Fig. S4) using soft lithography.[1] This robot incorporated a passive valving system (Fig. 1a, inset) that allowed us to (i) pressurize the pneunets easily, (ii) exhaust the product gases automatically (without external control), and (iii) actuate the same pneu-net repeatedly. By actuating all three legs simultaneously, we caused the robot to jump more than 30 times its height in less than 0.2 s, at a maximum vertical velocity of ~3.6 m/s. 2Our choice of explosive chemical reactions for actuation was based on several factors, one being their high volumetric energy density (in units of MJ/L). The energy density of a compressed gas, which we previously used to power soft robots, is ~0.1 MJ/L at 2,900 psi from the potential for mechanical work, w, done by the change in pressure (P), and volume (V) when decompressed to atmospheric pressure; ...

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