Photo credit: Sebastian Lee (bottom image) and Justin Yim (top)
UC Berkeley students have developed an innovative robot that can jump like a squirrel and is capable of landing on a narrow perch. Called Salto, short for Saltatorial Agile Locomotion on Terrain Obstacles, it features open grippers on its foot, while its flywheel and adjustments in leg tension help it land as well as balance on a branch.
Former UC Berkley graduate student Justin Yim and UC Berkeley undergraduate Eric Wang redesigned Salto to incorporate adjustable leg forces, supplementing the torque of the reaction wheel. This enabled Salto to jump onto a branch and balance a handful of times, despite the fact that it had no ability to grip with its feet.
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The robots we have now are OK, but how do you take it to the next level? How do you get robots to navigate a challenging environment in a disaster where you have pipes and beams and wires? Squirrels could do that, no problem. Robots can’t do that. Squirrels are nature’s best athletes. The way that they can maneuver and escape is unbelievable. The idea is to try to define the control strategies that give the animals a wide range of behavioral options to perform extraordinary feats and use that information to build more agile robots,” said Robert Full, one of paper’s senior authors and a professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley.
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