The Continuous Jump Control of a Locust-Inspired Robot With Omnidirectional Trajectory Adjustment

Jumping is an effective way for small robots to overcome obstacles. After years of development, many miniature jumping robots have been proposed with various mechanisms, and they have achieved jump trajectory control, fall recovery, and even continuous jumps. However, most miniature jumping robots do not have enough actuators to accurately regulate the robot's jumping trajectory, which limits the robot's flexibility to traverse complicated obstacles. In this letter, a variable energy storage and release mechanism and a take-off attitude control mechanism were designed for flexible jump trajectory control. The former was inspired by the semi-lunar process of the locust's hind legs. A cross structure was designed for both steering and body uprighting. Both the static modeling of the torsion springs and the dynamic modeling of the robot jumping process were modeled. This 28 cm long, 120 g weight robot was capable of continuous jumps with precisely controlled omnidirectional trajectories. The maximum jump height and jump distance were 2 m and 4 m. This jumping robot revealed a high trajectory repeatability, with a maximum error of less than 15.5 mm. Finally, the obstacle-crossing ability of this robot with two adjustable parameters was analyzed.