A Tiny Jumping Robot for Exploring Enceladus

Salto has been one of our favorite robots since we were first introduced to it in 2016 as a project out of Ron Fearing’s lab at UC Berkeley. The palm-sized spring-loaded jumping robot has gone from barely being able to chain together a few open-loop jumps to mastering landings, bouncing around outside, powering through obstacle courses, and occasionally exploding. What’s quite unusual about Salto is that it’s still an active research project—nine years is an astonishingly