The University of Pennsylvania’s RHex robot is an all-terrain walker that has been in development for a decade. The robot’s inventors have been programming obstacle-traversing strategies derived from parkour, getting it to do “double jumps, flips, and, through a combination of moves, even pull-ups:”
For the tallest obstacles, the robot can launch itself vertically, hook its front legs on the edge of the object it’s trying to surmount, then drag its body up and over. The researchers fully demonstrated this particular maneuver under more controlled conditions in the lab.
The paper where Johnson and Koditschek outlined these capabilities—”Toward a Vocabulary of Legged Leaping”—was selected as a finalist for best student paper at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in May.
(via Kottke)