{"id":244447,"date":"2026-09-24T01:21:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T06:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/tiny-robot-can-precisely-control-its-jump-height"},"modified":"2026-09-24T01:21:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T06:21:46","slug":"tiny-robot-can-precisely-control-its-jump-height","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/tiny-robot-can-precisely-control-its-jump-height","title":{"rendered":"Tiny robot can precisely control its jump height"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/tiny-robot-can-precisely-control-its-jump-height2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As our skies increasingly crowd with buzzing, hovering, flitting drones, spare a thought for the humble hopping robot. Hopping, a popular form of locomotion in the insect and amphibian worlds, is nearly two orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than flying. Unlike a mosquito that must constantly expend energy to stay aloft, a flea only works out when it jumps.<\/p>\n<p>Those cost savings could also pay off in the world of robotics: A group of small, simple hopping robots could explore a location much more cheaply than flying drones. These robots could find gas leaks in an oil refinery, monitor water and fertilizer usage on a farm, or even explore other planets.<\/p>\n<p>With this in mind, engineers at the University of Washington have created DirectHop, a roughly 1-gram (0.04-ounce) robot that can perform multiple hops in sequence and jump high enough to clear a standard stair step. The robot uses a tiny electric motor and three folding legs to launch itself to a specified jump height with 1-centimeter (0.4-inch) accuracy. After it lands, DirectHop can twitch to right itself and then prepare for another jump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As our skies increasingly crowd with buzzing, hovering, flitting drones, spare a thought for the humble hopping robot. Hopping, a popular form of locomotion in the insect and amphibian worlds, is nearly two orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than flying. Unlike a mosquito that must constantly expend energy to stay aloft, a flea only works [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1488,1506,6,8,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drones","category-food","category-robotics-ai","category-space","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}