Can You Jump Higher Than Salto?

Recently, two Engineering360 articles have focused on the new jumping robot, Salto. The robot, which resembles a cricket, seems to have captured our attention, but what makes this particular robot so special?

Salto can “leap into the air and then spring off a wall, or perform multiple vertical jumps in a row, resulting in the highest robotic vertical jumping agility ever recorded.” For comparison, Salto has a higher “jumping agility” than a bullfrog, but a lower one than the Galago, which has the title of “the animal kingdom’s most vertically agile creature,” according to the roboticists at UC Berkley.

Not only does Salto set the vertical jumping record, engineers hope the robot will eventually be able to aid in search and rescue missions because it has the ability to “leap across uneven terrain and cover a large amount of height and area in a short amount of time.”

Beyond creating jumping robots, recent years have brought a wide range of innovations to the robotic world, from softening a robot’s touch, giving them the ability to sense and react to people around them, or improving surgical precision. Robots are becoming more and more human—or in Salto’s case, better than us at some things. Researchers even believe “children learn new words using the same method as robots.”

What do you think this means for us? How do you feel about skilled robots?