A 1.1-gram, 6.5-centimeter soft robot made a single jump 7.68 times its own body height in a laboratory study published in Nature Communications in 2021. The pancake-like machine has no legs: high-voltage actuation shifts liquid inside a flexible pouch and bends a prestrained frame to launch it. The headline leap is a measured prototype result, not evidence of a commercially available or untethered robot.
How high did the legless robot jump?
Chen and coauthors reported a maximum single-jump height of 7.68 body heights and a jump distance of 1.46 body lengths. The completed prototype weighed 1.1 grams and measured 65 millimeters from end to end. These are measurements from the authors’ 2021 laboratory study, not performance claims for a product on sale. Read the paper.
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The authors summarized the result this way: “This 1.1 g and 6.5 cm tethered soft jumping robot is able to achieve a jumping height of 7.68 body heights and a continuous forward jumping speed of 6.01 body lengths per second.” The relative-height figure makes the leap sound dramatic, but it does not mean the device jumped several meters: the robot itself is only 6.5 centimeters long.
How does the pancake-like robot jump?
The legless soft jumping robot (LSJR) uses two flexible, semicircular pouches made from biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film. The front pouch contains dielectric liquid; the rear pouch contains air. A prestrained PVC ring frame runs along the edge of the body.
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When high voltage is applied, electrostatic attraction between electrodes redistributes liquid in the front pouch. The quick, directional movement deforms the body and bends the frame. The frame’s rebound helps propel the robot upward. The paper reports an actuation time of about 10 milliseconds.
In the prototype described by the paper, the pouch materials included 16-micrometer BOPP film, the dielectric liquid was 25# mineral transformer oil, the electrodes used graphene conductive ink, and the frame was 0.5-millimeter PVC. Fabrication involved screen printing, heat sealing, filling the pouch, and preforming the frame. Those details describe the researchers’ build; they are not, by themselves, a validated kit or complete instructions for a safe home project.
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How fast can it move, and can it steer?
Besides isolated leaps, the researchers demonstrated repeated forward jumping and steering with two robots connected side by side. The values below are results reported by Chen et al. in 2021 under the stated test conditions.
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|---|---|---|
| Continuous forward jumping on wood | 390.5 mm/s, or 6.01 body lengths per second | 4 Hz actuation, 10 kV |
| Continuous forward jumping on smooth glass | 95.6 mm/s, or 1.47 body lengths per second | 4 Hz actuation, 10 kV |
| Turning with two robots connected abreast | 138.4 degrees per second | Wood, 4 Hz actuation, 10 kV |
The difference between wood and glass shows why the speed figure needs its surface and settings attached: the robot depends on friction to move, and the smoother glass surface produced a much lower reported speed. The authors also found that actuation frequency and surface texture affected continuous movement and turning.
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What obstacles and sensing did the researchers demonstrate?
The paper reports trials crossing slopes, wires, single and continuous steps, ring-shaped obstacles, gravel mounds, and cubes of different shapes, including some larger than the robot. In obstacle experiments, the tested robot’s maximum height reached 18 millimeters.
The team also demonstrated recording environmental changes such as temperature and ultraviolet light, using a lightweight sensor or photochromic dyes. The paper discusses adding sensors for other conditions, including pollutants, as a possibility; it does not report successful pollutant detection by this robot.
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Is it untethered, or available to buy?
No: the reported continuous-locomotion setup used a tether, and the paper lists developing an untethered LSJR as future work. The robot’s high-voltage actuation is also a key part of the demonstrated system, not a detail to overlook when imagining practical use.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesThe cited study documents a research prototype, not a consumer robot or complete consumer kit. BOPP film is one material explicitly used in the prototype, but buying film alone is not a complete build recipe, and the paper does not establish a retail source for a finished LSJR.
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How strong is the evidence for the performance figures?
The study reports repeated experiments in the same laboratory environment. For jump tests, each experiment involved 10 repeats; the paper presents averages and standard deviations. The authors also report that three robots built with the same parameters differed by less than 10% in jump distance and height. These checks help describe repeatability within that study, but they are not independent replication by other laboratories.
The headline result is therefore best read narrowly: one published research design achieved a 7.68-body-height jump under laboratory test conditions. It demonstrates what a lightweight soft mechanism can do, while leaving practical questions such as untethered operation and reliable movement across varied real-world surfaces unresolved.
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