2025 One Hertz Challenge: Building A Better Jumping Bean

July 17, 2025 by Seth Mabbott 4 Comments

Do you feel nostalgia for a childhood novelty toy that had potential but ultimately fell short of its promise? Do you now have the skills to go make a better version of that toy to satisfy your long-held craving? [ExpensivePlasticCrap] does and has set off on a mission to make a better jumping bean.

Jumping beans, the phenomenon on which the novelty of [ExpensivePlasticCrap]’s childhood is based, are technically not beans, and their movement is arguably not a jump — a small hop at best. The trick is that the each not-a-bean has become the home to moth larvae that twitches and rolls on the ground as the larvae thrash about, trying to move their protective shells out of the hot sun.

The novelty bean was a small plastic pill-like capsule with a ball bearing inside what would cause the “bean” to move in unexpected ways as it rolled around. [ExpensivePlasticCrap]’s goal is to make a jumping bean that lives up to its name.

Various solenoids and motors were considered for the motion component of this new and improved bean. Ultimately, it was a small sealed vibrating motor that would be selected to move the bean without getting tangled in what was to become a compact bundle of components.

An ATtiny microcontroller won out over discrete components for the job of switching the motor on and off (once per second), for ease of implementation. Add this along with a MOSFET, battery and charging board for power into a plastic capsule, and the 1 Hz jumping bean was complete.

[ExpensivePlasticCrap] offers some thoughts on how to get more jump out of the design by reducing the weight of the build and giving it a more powerful source of motion.

If insect-inspired motion gets you jumping, check out this jumping robot roach and these tiny RoboBees.

Jump Like Mario With This Weighted Wearable

May 11, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 5 Comments

Virtual reality has come a long way in the past decade, with successful commercial offerings for gaming platforms still going strong as well as a number of semi-virtual, or augmented, reality tools that are proving their worth outside of a gaming environment as well. But with all this success they still haven’t quite figured out methods of locomotion that feel natural like walking or running. One research group is leaping to solve one of these issues with JumpMod: a wearable device that enhances the sensation of jumping.

The group, led by [Pedro Lopes] at the University of Chicago, uses a two-kilogram weight worn on the back to help provide the feeling of jumping or falling. By interfacing it with the virtual reality environment, the weight can quickly move up or down its rails when it detects that the wearer is about to commit to an action that it thinks it can enhance. Wearers report feeling like they are jumping much higher, or even smashing into the ground harder. The backpack offers a compact and affordable alternative to the bulky and expensive hardware traditionally used for this purpose.

With builds like these, we would hope the virtual reality worlds that are being created become even more immersive and believable. Of course that means a lot more work into making other methods of movement in the virtual space feel believable (like walking, to start with) but it’s an excellent piece of technology that shows some progress. Augmenting the virtual space doesn’t always need bulky hardware like this, though. Take a “look” at this device which can build a believable virtual reality space using nothing more than a webcam.

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When [Carl] Says Jump, PCBs Say “How High?”

July 30, 2022 by Al Williams 4 Comments

We’ve noticed that [Carl Bugeja] likes flexible PCBs. His latest exploit is to make PCB-based springs that combine with some magnets to create little devices that jump. We aren’t sure what practical use these might have, but they are undeniably novel and you can see them — um — jumping around, in the video, below.

[Carl] did many experiments with the spring construction and design. You can see several of the iterations in the video, not all of which worked out well. A PCB coil in the base becomes magnetized when current flows and this repels or attracts the magnets at the other end of the spring. What can you do with a PCB spring? We aren’t sure. Maybe this is how your next microrobot could climb stairs?

Adding stiffeners produced springs too stiff for the electromagnet to attract. We wondered if a different coil design at the base might be more effective. For that matter, you might not have to use a flat PCB coil in that position if you were really wanting to optimize the jumping behavior.

Usually, when we are checking in with [Carl] he is making PCB-based motors. Or, sometimes, he’s making PCB heaters for reflow soldering. We’ve seen jumping robots, before, of course. we will say the magnets seem less intense than using compressed air.

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Record-Setting Jumper Tosses Biomimicry Out The Window

June 29, 2022 by Ryan Flowers 39 Comments

How can a few grams of battery, geared motor, and some nifty materials get a jumping robot over 30 meters into the air? It wasn’t by copying a grasshopper, kangaroo, or an easily scared kitty. How was it done, then?

It’s been observed that of all the things that are possible in nature, out of all the wonderful mechanisms, fluid and aerodynamics, and chemistry, there’s one thing that is so far undiscovered in a living thing: continuous rotation. Yes, that’s right, the simple act of going roundy-round is unique to mechanical devices rather than biological organisms. And when it comes to jumping robots, biomimicry can only go so far.

With this distinct mechanical advantage in mind, [Elliot Hawkes] of the University of California Santa Barbara decided to look beyond biomimicry. As explained in the paper in Nature and demonstrated in the video below the break, the jumping robot being considered uses rubber bands, carbon fiber bows, and commodity items such as a geared motor and LiPo batteries to essentially wind up the spring mechanism and then, like a trap being sprung, release the pent up energy all at once. The result? The little jumper can go almost 100 feet into the air. Be sure to check it out!

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Little Jumping Bot Can Now Stick The Perfect Landing

August 2, 2020 by Danie Conradie 15 Comments

Sticking the perfect landing can take years of practice for a human gymnast, and it seems the same is true for little monopedal jumping robots. Salto-1P, an old acquaintance here on Hackaday, always needed to keep jumping to stay upright. With some clever control software improvements, it can now land reliably on an area the size of a coin, and then stay there. (Video after the break)

[Justin Yim] from the UC Berkeley’s Biomimetics Lab has been working on Salto for the past four years, and we’ve covered it twice before. Attitude control is handles by a combination of propeller thrusters for roll and yaw, and a reaction wheel for pitch.While it was already impressive before, it had a predictable landing area about the size of a dinner plate.

The trick to the perfect landing is a combination of landing angle, angular velocity and angular momentum. Salto can only correct for ±2.3° of landing angle error, because it doesn’t have a second foot to catch itself when something goes wrong. Ideally the robot’s angular velocity and momentum should be as close as possible to 0 at takeoff, which gives the reaction wheel maximum control authority in flight, as well as on landing. Basically a well executed takeoff directly influences the chances of a good landing. [Justin] does an excellent job explaining all this and more on the project’s presentation video. Continue reading “Little Jumping Bot Can Now Stick The Perfect Landing” →

Super Mario 64 As Experienced By Mario

July 16, 2020 by Bryan Cockfield 4 Comments

Microsoft’s Kinect, a motion-sensing peripherial originally for the Xbox 360, is almost exactly a decade old now. And in that decade it has expanded from its limited existence tied to a console to a widely-used tool for effective and detailed motion sensing, without breaking the bank. While it’s seen use well outside of video games, it’s still being used to reimagine some classic games. In this project, Reddit user [SuperLouis64] has used it to control Mario with his own body.

While the build still involves some use of a hand controller, most of Mario’s movements are controlled by making analogous movements on a small trampoline, including the famed triple jump. The kinect is able to sense all of these movements and translate them into the game using software that [SuperLouis64] built as well. The trickiest movement seems to be Mario’s spin movement, which appears to have taken some practice to get right.

We appreciate the build quality on this one, and [SuperLouis64]’s excitement in playing the game with his creation. It truly looks like a blast to play, and he even mentions in the Reddit thread that he’s gotten a lot of productive excercise with his various VR and augumented reality games in the past few months. Of course if this is too much physical activity, you could always switch to using your car as the unique game controller instead.

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One-Legged Jumping Robot Shows That Control Is Everything

October 9, 2018 by Donald Papp 29 Comments

Robots that can jump have been seen before, but a robot that jumps all the time is a little different. Salto-1P is a one-legged jumping robot at UC Berkeley, and back in 2017 it demonstrated the ability to hop continuously with enough control to keep itself balanced. Since then it has been taught some new tricks; having moved beyond basic stability it can now jump around and upon things with an impressive degree of control.

Key to doing this is the ability to plant its single foot exactly where it wants, which allows for more complex behaviors such as hopping onto and across different objects. [Justin Yim] shows this off in the video embedded below, which demonstrates the Salto-1P bouncing around in a remarkably controlled fashion, even on non-ideal things like canted surfaces. Two small propellers allow the robot to twist in midair, but all the motive force comes from the single leg.

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