Design and Control of a High-Performance Hopping Robot

Abstract

Jumping and hopping locomotion are efficient means of traversing unstructured rugged terrain with the former being the focus of roboticists; a focus that has recently been changing. This focus has led to significant performance and understanding in jumping robots but with limited practical applications as they require significant time between jumps to store energy, thus relegating jumping to a secondary role in locomotion. Hopping locomotion, however, can preserve and transfer energy to subsequent hops without long energy storage periods. However, incorporating the performance observed in jumping systems into their hopping counterparts is an ongoing challenge. To date, hopping robots typically operate around 1 m with a maximum of 1.63 m whereas jumping robots have reached heights of 30 m. This is due to the added design and control complexity inherent in developing a system able to input and store the necessary energy while withstanding the forces involved and managing the system's state. Here we report hopping robot design principles for efficient, robust, high-specific energy, and high-energy input actuation through analytical, simulation, and experimental results. The resulting robot (MultiMo-MHR) can hop over 4 meters or $\sim$2.4x the current state-of-the-art.