World's Highest Jumping Robot

A tiny jumping robot has shattered the standing record for “true jumps,” reaching 31 meters—nearly 10 times higher than the previous 3.7-meter benchmark—by turning a lightweight spring mechanism into a high-speed energy release system. The jump qualifies only if the robot pushes off the ground (not air like a quadcopter) and loses no mass during takeoff (so rockets and arrows don’t count). That strict definition matters because it frames the engineering challenge: store energy efficiently, then dump it into vertical motion in a single, ground-based launch.

The robot’s performance hinges on how it stores and releases energy. Its core structure uses four carbon-fiber pieces bound by elastic bands to form a spring, while a small motor winds a string around an axle to compress the spring. After about 1.5 minutes of winding, a latch holds the compressed energy until the robot is correctly positioned, then releases so the string unspools at once. The result is extreme acceleration: from rest to over 100 kilometers per hour in just nine milliseconds, corresponding to more than 300 g’s—levels that would be lethal to living creatures.

Why the height is so dramatic comes down to three design choices. First, the robot is extraordinarily light—about 30 grams—using a tiny motor and battery and relying on carbon fiber and rubber for both structure and spring function. Second, the spring material strategy favors natural latex rubber, which can store roughly 7,000 joules per kilogram. Third, the spring’s internal geometry was tuned to produce an unusually flat “force profile” across compression, avoiding the steep force ramps seen in earlier rubber-band/hinged-rod designs and the high startup force of carbon-fiber-only slats. The hybrid approach keeps the required pulling force steadier and, according to the researchers, doubles the energy storage compared with a typical displacement-proportional spring.

A major leap in capability also comes from “work multiplication.” Unlike animals that must jump using a single muscle stroke, the robot can accumulate energy over many motor revolutions before releasing it in one burst. A latch under tension prevents premature unspooling, effectively trading time for energy: the motor builds the energy gradually over minutes, then the spring converts it into a rapid launch. The team notes that biological latches exist—like in sand fleas—but no organism is known to achieve work multiplication for a standstill jump internally.

The design also addresses a counterintuitive mass issue: adding dead weight can hurt, but adding mass to the moving part can help energy transfer. Experiments adding a chunk of steel to the top increased jump height by improving collision efficiency, because the moving body needs to weigh at least as much as the “foot” portion for effective energy transfer.

Beyond record-setting, the engineering could matter for exploration. On the Moon’s one-sixth gravity, the same mechanism could reach about 125 meters high and travel roughly half a kilometer forward. Jumpers could hop over steep cliffs and deep craters where rovers struggle, potentially fetching samples and returning them to a lander. The work multiplication concept—building energy over time with small motors—could let future robots store and release far more energy than current motor power limits allow, while also enabling steerable and self-righting fleets for repeated hops.