DirectHop micro jumping robot can precisely control jump height

DirectHop is a roughly 1-gram micro jumping robot developed at the University of Washington that uses a tiny motor to drive takeoff directly rather than a spring, achieving jump-height precision of 1 centimeter; it can jump repeatedly and clear a standard step height. Its self-righting success rate after landing is 90%. The current prototype requires external power and is controlled by a laptop, and the team is developing onboard power and a camera to enable autonomous navigation. The paper will be published at IROS 2026, and the researchers estimate a production cost of about 10 dollars per unit.