Engineers have built robots that slither, scuttle, and even swim like nightmare fuel, but none have quite cracked the code of nature’s most chaotic acrobat: the squirrel. These tiny daredevils fling themselves through the air, land on twigs thinner than a bad excuse, and somehow don’t end up as roadkill every time they miscalculate. Until now, no robot has even come close to replicating their midair wizardry.
UC Berkeley scientists decided that was unacceptable. Using high-speed cameras and some squirrel-based espionage, they studied how these furry parkour masters defy physics. The result? A hopping robot that can not only launch itself with precision but also stick the landing on a perch barely wide enough for a conspiracy theory.
They call it Salto. Originally developed in 2016, this one-legged robo-marsupial could already hop like a caffeinated kangaroo, but it had one fatal flaw: it couldn’t land with any real accuracy. Great for party tricks, useless for navigating, say, a partially collapsed building or an alien jungle. So, researchers gave it a brain upgrade—one that mimics how squirrels adjust their bodies mid-flight to avoid a bad day.
Robert Full, a UC Berkeley professor and one of the brains behind this experiment, put it bluntly: “Squirrels could do that, no problem. Robots can’t do that.” And he’s right. The ability to leap onto a precarious surface and not immediately wipe out is a game-changer for robotics. Think disaster recovery bots that can scale debris, or search-and-rescue machines that don’t require a perfectly flat surface to function.
The trick? Body control. When humans jump onto a spot—say, while playing hopscotch or avoiding sidewalk cracks like a superstitious gremlin—their bodies instinctively adjust to stick the landing. Too far forward? Arms flail backward. Too far back? Knees bend to compensate. The researchers taught Salto the same trick. If it overshoots, it straightens up. Undershoots? Crouches. It’s squirrel-level decision-making, minus the existential dread about whether it left a nut somewhere.
Now, here’s where things get even weirder: NASA’s interested. Specifically, in using this squirrel-inspired technology to explore Enceladus, a moon of Saturn where gravity is so weak that a single hop could carry a bot ridiculous distances. Imagine a robot, built to mimic a common backyard menace, bounding across an alien landscape, leaping over icy fissures, and maybe—just maybe—sticking the ultimate lunar parkour move.
Did You Know?
- Squirrels can fall from any height and survive, thanks to their low terminal velocity. They are, essentially, nature’s most reckless stunt doubles.
- NASA once considered using hopping robots for asteroid exploration, since wheels are useless on a spinning rock in space.
- A squirrel once shut down the NASDAQ stock market by chewing through a power line. Let that sink in.
