Mobile robots might have limitations in mobility when moving in various and unstructured environments if only single locomotion is possible. Insects perform various locomotion mode and select appropriate locomotion mode depending on the situation. In robots, multi-modal robots that integrating locomotion modes have been developed, which have attempted to expand locomotion domain or reduce the cost of transport.

The locomotion that integrates jumping and crawling expands the environment to reach or overcome compared to the single locomotion. However, simple addition of jumping and crawling module cause the whole system to be heavy. To maintain appropriate jumping height, the jumping module is required to have much increased amount of stored-energy. Therefore, we developed a jumping module that can store a lot of energy, store as much energy as desired, and release it any time. This jumping module was integrated with a lightweight Dash crawler, and this jump-crawler is called JumpRoACH. This robot can control its trajectory by adjusting both its crawling speed and its jumping take-off speed.

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Keywords : #Crawling, #Jumping, #Multi-modal robot