Wound-helix robot leaps and bounds over obstacles
Wound-helix robot leaps and bounds over obstacles
Researchers from UCLA and the University of Michigan have developed a frog-like robot that uses flexible rods to snap between shapes, enabling it to hop over obstacles, climb steps, and swim. The robot outperforms rigid-legged designs in speed and adaptability across various surfaces, offering potential applications in search-and-rescue and inspection tasks.
The study demonstrates a novel method for small robot locomotion using elastic snapping mechanisms, outperforming rigid-legged designs in speed and obstacle navigation across multiple surfaces.
Source: New Atlas — Robotics · Read original article ↗
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What the source reports
Publisher-reported claims, with original evidence. These results have not been independently verified by RoboSignal.
Reported numbers
body lengths per second
3.21
body lengths per second
2.46
body lengths per second
0.79
length
11
mass
98.2
length
4.3
mass
3.5
Source excerpts and review record
Automatically extracted; no manual editorial approval recorded.
snaps. The snapping robot moved faster on every surface, reaching 3.21 body lengths per second on wood. Across all six surfaces, it averaged 2.46 body lengths per second, compared with 0.79 for the rigid-legged version. The difference was especially obvious on cloth and grass, where the rigid-legged robot nearly stalled. The prototype also climbed small steps and performed repeated backflips. Fitted with thin flexib
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le fins, it swam at about half a body length per second and could steer around obstacles, including during tests with wind disturbances. Moving the two limbs at different rates allowed it to steer. On land, the researchers remotely guided it through a sandbox containing rocks and used light sensors to demonstrate autonomous steering toward a light source. Tiny robots can hop or swim. So, in what practical scenarios i
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chers built an 11-cm-long (4.3-in), 98.2-g (3.5-oz) robot with two snapping rear limbs. As detailed in their study published in Science Advances , they then compared it with a version fitted with rigid legs on wood, cloth, acrylic, leather, grass, and sand. Both robots had equal-power motors, with one providing steady, continuous motion in the rigid legs and the other intermittently storing energy and releasing it in
Open source S11
Source：New Atlas — Robotics · newatlas.com