Researchers from Disney Research have built a cordless one-legged hopping robot that can bounce up to 7 seconds/19 times without falling over. They employed a linear elastic actuator in parallel (LEAP), which placed a voice coil actuator (VCA) in parallel with compression springs, to act as the primary weight-bearing actuator for the one-legged hopping robot. This is the first untethered one-legged hopper that can achieve continuous hopping without using offboard power. Please visit the publication page for more details.

Untethered One-Legged Hopping in 3D Using Linear Elastic Actuator in Parallel (LEAP).

Courtesy of Disney Research.