Globular springtails (Dicyrtomina minuta) are small bugs about five millimetres long that can be seen crawling through leaf litter and garden soil. While they do not have wings and cannot fly, they more than make up for it with their ability to hop relatively large heights and distances.

This jumping feat is thanks to a tail-like appendage on their abdomen called a furcula, which is folded in beneath their body, held under tension.

When released, it snaps against the ground in as little as 20 milliseconds, flipping the springtail up to 6 cm into the air and 10 cm horizontally.

Researchers at the Harvard John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have now created a robot that mimics this jumping ability.

They modified a cockroach-inspired robot to include a latch-mediated spring actuator, in which potential energy is stored in an elastic element – essentially a robotic fork-like furcula.

Via computer simulations and experiments to control the length of the linkages in the furcula as well as the energy stored in them, the team found that the robot could jump some 1.4 m horizontally, or 23 times its body length – the longest of any existing robot relative to body length.

The work could help design robots that can traverse places that are hazardous to humans.

“Walking provides a precise and efficient locomotion mode but is limited in terms of obstacle traversal,” notes Harvard’s Robert Wood. “Jumping can get over obstacles but is less controlled. The combination of the two modes can be effective for navigating natural and unstructured environments.”