Mi-drone, mi-bâton sauteur : des étudiants de Toronto ont dû offrir un vrai pied à leur robot

Take a pogo stick, add a propeller drone and hand the lot to engineering students at the University of Toronto. According to Hackaday, the result is a “one-legged hopping robot”.

Four propellers provide the power that sets the robot in motion. The bounces come solely from the single spring-mounted leg, which serves as the landing gear.

The first versions made do with a simple spike at the end of the leg. They failed in a way some might find comic, as the video published by Hackaday shows.

The students therefore replaced the spike with a spiked, pivoting sole, held taut by what look like rubber bands. It is meant to keep the robot upright on any terrain, from soft sand to hard ice.

According to Hackaday, this real foot, which grips and pivots to fit the terrain, works “much better” than the original spike.