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 long life time for any robot, especially one without any immediately obvious practical applications. But one of Salto’s original creators, Justin Yim (who is now a professor at the University of Illinois), has found a niche where Salto might be able to do what no other robot can: mid-air sampling of the water geysering out of the frigid surface of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. What makes Enceladus so interesting is that it’s completely covered in a 40 kilometer thick sheet of ice, and underneath that ice is a 10 km-deep global ocean. And within that ocean can be found—we know not what. Diving in that buried ocean is a problem that robots may be able to solve at some point, but in the near(er) term, Enceladus’ south pole is home to over a hundred cryovolcanoes that spew plumes of water vapor and all kinds of other stuff right out into space, offering a sampling opportunity to any robot that can get close enough for a sip. “We can cover large distances, we can get over obstacles, we don’t require an atmosphere, and we don’t pollute anything.” —Justin Yim, University of Illinois Yim, along with another Salto veteran Ethan Schaler (now at JPL), have been awarded funding through NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program to turn Salto into a robot that can perform “Legged Exploration Across the Plume,” or in an only moderately strained backronym, LEAP. LEAP would be a space-ified version of Salto with a couple of major modifications allowing it to operate in a freezing, airless, low-gravity environment. Exploring Enceladus’ Challenging Terrain As best as we can make out from images taken during Cassini flybys, the surface of Enceladus is unfriendly to traditional rovers, covered in ridges and fissures, although we don’t have very much information on the exact properties of the terrain. There’s also essentially no atmosphere, meaning that you can’t fly using aerodynamics, and if you use rockets to fly instead, you run the risk of your exhaust contaminating any samples that you take. “This doesn’t leave us with a whole lot of options for getting around, but one that seems like it might be particularly suitable is jumping,” Yim tells us. “We can cover large distances, we can get over obstacles, we don’t require an atmosphere, and we don’t pollute anything.” And with Enceladus’ gravity being just 1/80th that of Earth, Salto’s meter-high jump on Earth would enable it to travel a hundred meters or so on Enceladus, taking samples as it soars through cryovolcano plumes. The current version of Salto does require an atmosphere, because it uses a pair of propellers as tiny thrusters to control yaw and roll. On LEAP, those thrusters would be replaced with an angled pair of reaction wheels instead. To deal with the terrain, the robot will also likely need a foot that can handle jumping from (and landing on) surfaces composed of granular ice particles. LEAP is designed to jump through Enceladus’ many plumes to collect samples, and use the moon’s terrain to direct subsequent jumps.NASA/Justin Yim While the vision is for LEAP to jump continuously, bouncing over the surface and through plumes in a controlled series of hops, sooner or later it’s going to have a bad landing, and the robot has to be prepared for that. “I think one of the biggest new technological developments is going to be multimodal locomotion,” explains Yim. “Specifically, we’d like to have a robust ability to handle falls.” The reaction wheels can help with this in two ways: they offer some protection by acting like a shell around the robot, and they can also operate as a regular pair of wheels, allowing the robot to roll around on the ground a little bit. “With some maneuvers that we’re experimenting with now, the reaction wheels might also be able to help the robot to pop itself back upright so that it can start jumping again after it falls over,” Yim says. A NIAC project like this is about as early-stage as it gets for something like LEAP, and an Enceladus mission is very far away as measured by almost every metric—space, time, funding, policy, you name it. Long term, the idea with LEAP is that it could be an add-on to a mission concept called the Enceladus Orbilander. This US $2.5 billion spacecraft would launch sometime in the 2030s, and spend about a dozen years getting to Saturn and entering orbit around Enceladus. After 1.5 years in orbit, the spacecraft would land on the surface, and spend a further 2 years looking for biosignatures. The Orbilander itself would be stationary, Yim explains, “so having this robotic mobility solution would be a great way to do expanded exploration of Enceladus, getting really long distance coverage to collect water samples from plumes on different areas of the surface.” LEAP has been funded through a nine-month Phase 1 study that begins this April. While the JPL team investigates ice-foot interactions and tries to figure out how to keep the robot from freezing to death, at the University of Illinois Yim will be upgrading Salto with self-righting capability. Honestly, it’s exciting to think that after so many years, Salto may have finally found an application where it offers the actual best solution for solving this particular problem of low-gravity mobility for science.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion. RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANY German Robotics Conference: 13–15 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANY European Robotics Forum: 25–27 March 2025, STUTTGART, GERMANY RoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND ICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, NC ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GA London Humanoids Summit: 29–30 May 2025, LONDON IEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN 2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON, TX RSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELES ETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVA IAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALY ICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGAL IEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREA IFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARIS RoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL Enjoy today’s videos! A bioinspired robot developed at EPFL can change shape to alter its own physical properties in response to its environment, resulting in a robust and efficient autonomous vehicle as well as a fresh approach to robotic locomotion. [ Science Robotics ] via [ EPFL ] A robot CAN get up this way, but SHOULD a robot get up this way? [ University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ] I’m impressed with the capabilities here, but not the use case. There are already automated systems that do this much faster, much more reliably, and almost certainly much more cheaply. So, probably best to think of this as more of a technology demo than anything with commercial potential. [ Figure ] NEO Gamma is the next generation of home humanoids designed and engineered by 1X Technologies. The Gamma series includes improvements across NEO’s hardware and AI, featuring a new design that is deeply considerate of life at home. The future of Home Humanoids is here. You all know by now not to take this video too seriously, but I will say that an advantage of building a robot like this for the home is that realistically it can spend most of its time sitting down and (presumably) charging. [ 1X Technologies ] This video compilation showcases novel aerial and underwater drone platforms and an ultra-quiet electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) propeller. These technologies were developed by the Advanced Vertical Flight Laboratory (AVFL) at Texas A&M University and Harmony Aeronautics, an AVFL spin-off company. [ AVFL ] Yes! More research like this please; legged robots (of all sizes) are TOO STOMPY. [ ETH Zurich ] Robosquirrel! [ BBC ] via [ Laughing Squid ] By watching their own motions with a camera, robots can teach themselves about the structure of their own bodies and how they move, a new study from researchers at Columbia Engineering now reveals. Equipped with this knowledge, the robots could not only plan their own actions, but also overcome damage to their bodies. [ Columbia University, School of Engineering and Applied Science ] If I was asking my robot to do a front flip for the first(ish) time, my face would probably look like the poor guy at 0:25. But it worked! [ EngineAI ] *We kindly request that all users refrain from making any dangerous modifications or using the robots in a hazardous manner. A hazardous manner? Like teaching it martial arts...? [ Unitree ] Explore SLAMSpoof—a cutting-edge project by Keio-CSG that demonstrates how LiDAR spoofing attacks can compromise SLAM systems. In this video, we explore how spoofing attacks can compromise the integrity of SLAM systems, review the underlying methodology, and discuss the potential security implications for robotics and autonomous navigation. Whether you’re a robotics enthusiast, a security researcher, or simply curious about emerging technologies, this video offers valuable insights into both the risks and the innovations in the field. [ SLAMSpoof ] Thanks, Kentaro! Sanctuary AI, a company developing physical AI for general purpose robots, announced the integration of new tactile sensor technology into its Phoenix general purpose robots. The integration enables teleoperation pilots to more effectively leverage the dexterity capabilities of general purpose robots to achieve complex, touch-driven tasks with precision and accuracy. [ Sanctuary AI ] I don’t know whether it’s the shape or the noise or what, but this robot pleases me. [ University of Pennsylvania, Sung Robotics Lab ] Check out the top features of the new Husky A300 - the next evolution of our rugged and customizable mobile robotic platform. Husky A300 offers superior performance, durability, and flexibility, empowering robotics researchers and innovators to tackle the most complex challenges in demanding environments. [ Clearpath Robotics ] The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover will drill deeper than any other mission has ever attempted on the Red Planet. Rosalind Franklin will be the first rover to reach a depth of up to two meters deep below the surface, acquiring samples that have been protected from harsh surface radiation and extreme temperatures. [ European Space Agency ] AI has been improving by leaps and bounds in recent years, and a string of new models can generate answers that almost feel as if they came from a person reasoning through a problem. But is AI actually close to reasoning like humans can? IBM distinguished scientist Murray Campbell chats with IBM Fellow Francesca Rossi about her time as president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). They discuss the state of AI, what modern reasoning models are actually doing, and whether we’ll see models that reason like we do. [ IBM Research ]

Frustrated scientists turned to visual aids to help make their case for the lightning rod. The exploding thunder house is one example. When a small amount of gunpowder was deposited inside the dollhouse-size structure and a charge was applied, the house would either explode or not, depending on whether it was ungrounded or grounded. [For more on thunder houses, see “Tiny Exploding Houses Promoted 18th-Century Lightning Rods,.” IEEE Spectrum, 1 April 2023.] Three Experimental Illustrations of a General Law of Electrical Discharge made the case for Harris’s invention: a lightning rod for tall-masted wooden ships. The rod was attached to the mainmast, ran through the hull, and connected to copper sheeting on the underside of the ship, thus dissipating any electricity from a lightning strike into the sea. It was a great idea, and it seemed to work. So why did the British Navy refuse to adopt it? I’ll get to that in a bit. How to Illustrate the Principles of Lightning The “experimental illustrations” in Harris’s 16-page pamphlet were intended to be interactive, each one highlighting a specific principle of conductivity. The illustrations were plated with gold leaf to mimic the conducting path of lightning. When the reader applied a charge to one end, the current charred a black course along the page. In the illustration at top, someone has clearly done this on the right hand side. In the first experimental illustration in Harris’s book, the gold leaf is scattered haphazardly across the page. Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology The second experiment addresses a problem that was common in the days of tall ships: the rise and fall of the lightning rod as the jibs and rigging were adjusted according to the weather. Whereas a church steeple and its lightning rod remain fixed, a movable mast and the constantly changing rigging altered the configuration of the lightning rod. The experiment demonstrates that Harris’s design wasn’t affected by such changes. A charge wouldn’t dead-end and detonate midship just because a jib had been lowered. It would still follow the conductor that leads to the best exit for dissipation—that is, the ship’s bottom. The second experiment was intended to show, in a stylized way, the effect of the lightning rod rising and falling as the jibs and rigging were adjusted.Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology The experiment illustrates what would happen if the sailor were to accidentally come in contact with two points of a loose conductive cable during a lightning storm. Instead of following the cable, the discharge would course straight through him. As Harris wrote in the description, the poor seaman “would be probably destroyed.” Death was a clear risk for sailors on unprotected ships, just as it was for bell ringers in unprotected churches. Mr. Thunder-and-Lightning Harris William Snow Harris published Three Experimental Illustrations when he was about 70, and he died six years later. The booklet was his final salvo in a battle he had waged with the Royal Navy for decades. William Snow Harris (1791–1867) trained as a medical doctor but gave up his practice to focus on promoting his lightning rod for wooden ships. Plymouth Athenaeum An 1823 book on the effects of lightning on ships also featured his gold-leafed experimental illustrations, along with a vivid description of a lightning strike on an unprotected ship: “The main-top mast, from head to heel, was shivered into a thousand splinters….” Harris enlisted support for his system from leading scientists, such as Michael Faraday, Charles Wheatstone, and Humphry Davy. He eventually earned the nickname Mr. Thunder-and-Lightning Harris for his zealotry. Harris continued to press his case. A well-publicized lightning strike on the U.S. packet ship New York in 1827 helped. Three days into its transatlantic journey, lightning struck at dawn. The “electrical fluid,” as it was then called, ran down the mainmast, bursting three iron hoops and shattering the masthead and cap. It entered a storeroom and demolished the bulkheads and fittings before following a lead pipe into the ladies’ cabin and fragmenting a large mirror. Elsewhere, it overturned a piano, split the dining table into pieces, and magnetized the ship’s chronometer as well as most of the men’s watches. New York again. As the American Journal of Science and Arts reported, the chain was “literally torn to pieces and scattered to the winds,” but it did its job and saved the ship, and no passengers were killed. Beagle, which was about to set sail for a surveying trip of South America. After it returned five years later, one of its passengers, Charles Darwin, published an account that made the voyage famous. (His 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, was also based on his research aboard the Beagle.) The HMS Beagle, made famous by Charles Darwin, was one of 11 British navy ships to be outfitted with Harris’s fixed lightning rods. Bettmann/Getty Images described a strike that he witnessed while on deck: “The mainmast, for the instant, appeared to be a mass of fire, I felt certain that the lightning had passed down the conductor on that mast.” Thetis, whose foremast had been destroyed by lightning, so he was especially attuned to the destruction storms could cause. Yet on the Beagle, he wrote, “not the slightest ill consequence was experienced.” When Captain Robert FitzRoy made his report to the admiralty, he likewise endorsed Harris’s system: “Were I allowed to choose between masts so fitted and the contrary, I should decide in favor of those having Harris’s conductors.” Numbers Don’t Lie Not to be defeated, Harris turned to statistics, compiling a list of 235 British naval vessels damaged by lightning, from the Abercromby (26 October 1811, topmast shivered into splinters 14 feet down) to the Zebra (27 March 1838, main-topgallant and topmast shivered; fell on the deck; main-cap split; the jib and sails on mainmast scorched). Additionally, he cataloged the deaths of nearly 100 seamen and serious injury of about 250 others. During one particularly bad period of five or six years, Harris learned, lightning destroyed 40 ships of the line, 20 frigates, and 10 sloops, disabling about one-eighth of the British navy. Rodney. Sensing an opportunity to make a public case for his system, Harris bypassed the admiralty and petitioned the House of Commons to review his claims. A Naval Commission appointed to do that wound up firmly supporting Harris. if they petitioned the admiralty. Given how openly hostile the admiralty was toward Harris, I’m guessing many captains didn’t do that. A Lightning Rod for Every British Warship Finally, in June 1842, the admiralty ordered the use of Harris’s lightning rods on all Royal Navy vessels. According to Theodore Bernstein and Terry S. Reynolds, who chronicled Harris’s battle in their 1978 article “Protecting the Royal Navy from Lightning: William Snow Harris and His Struggle with the British Admiralty for Fixed Lightning Conductors” in IEEE Transactions on Education, the navy’s change of heart wasn’t due to better data or more appeals by Harris and his backers. It mostly came down to politics. A second argument was financial. Harris’s system was significantly more expensive than a simple cable or chain. In one 1831 estimate, the cost of Harris’s system ranged from £102 for a 10-gun brig to £365 for a 120-gun brig, compared to less than £5 for the simple cable. Sure, Harris’s system was effective, but was it more than 20 times as effective? Of course, the simple cable offered no protection at all if it was never deployed, as many captains admitted to. John Barrow (1764–1848), second secretary to the Royal Navy Admiralty, was singularly effective at blocking the adoption of Harris’s lightning rod. National Portrait Gallery But the ultimate reason for the navy’s resistance, argued Bernstein and Reynolds, was political. In 1830, when Harris seemed on the verge of success, the Whigs gained control of Parliament. In the course of a few months, many of Harris’s government supporters found themselves powerless or outright fired. It wasn’t until late 1841, when the Tories regained power, that Harris’s fortunes reversed. John Barrow, second secretary to the admiralty, as the key person standing in Harris’s way. Political appointees came and went, but Barrow held his office for over 40 years, from 1804 to 1845. Barrow managed the navy’s budget, and he apparently considered Harris a charlatan who was trying to sell the navy an expensive and useless technology. He used his position to continually block it. One navy supporter of Harris’s system called Barrow “the most obstinate man living.” Harris eventually proved victorious. By 1850, every vessel in the Royal Navy was equipped with his lightning rod. But the victory was fleeting. By the start of the next decade, the first British ironclad ship had appeared, and by the end of the century, all new naval ships were made of metal. Metal ships naturally conduct lightning to the surrounding water. There was no longer a need for a lightning rod. Part of a continuing series looking at historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology. An abridged version of this article appears in the March 2025 print issue as “The Path of Most Resistance.” References Finch Collins, assistant curator of rare books at the Linda Hall Library, in Kansas City, Mo., introduced me to the books of William Snow Harris. You should have seen his face when I asked if we could apply a battery to one of the lightning experiments in the book. You can see the books in person by visiting the library. Or you can enjoy fully scanned copies of Observations on the Effects of Lightning on Floating Bodies and Three Experimental Illustrations from your computer. Theodore Bernstein of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Terry S. Reynolds of Michigan Technological University wrote “Protecting the Royal Navy from Lightning—William Snow Harris and His Struggle with the British Admiralty for Fixed Lightning Conductors” for the February 1978 issue of IEEE Transactions on Education. Many thanks to my colleague Cary Mock, a climatologist at the University of South Carolina who has an interest in extreme weather events throughout history. He has done amazing work re-creating paths of hurricanes based on navy logbooks. Cary patiently answered my questions about lightning and wooden ships and pointed me to additional resources, such as this fabulous “Index of 19th Century Naval Vessels.”

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion. RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANY German Robotics Conference: 13–15 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANY European Robotics Forum: 25–27 March 2025, STUTTGART, GERMANY RoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND ICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, NC ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GA London Humanoids Summit: 29–30 May 2025, LONDON IEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN 2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON, TX RSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELES ETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVA IAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALY ICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGAL IEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREA IFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARIS RoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL Enjoy today’s videos! We’re introducing Helix, a generalist Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model that unifies perception, language understanding, and learned control to overcome multiple longstanding challenges in robotics. This is moderately impressive; my favorite part is probably the hand-offs and that extra little bit of HRI with what we’d call eye contact if these robots had faces. But keep in mind that you’re looking at close to best case for robotic manipulation, and that if the robots had been given the bag instead of well-spaced objects on a single color background, or if the fridge had a normal human amount of stuff in it, they might be having a much different time of it. Also, is it just me, or is the sound on this video very weird? Like, some things make noise, some things don’t, and the robots themselves occasionally sound more like someone just added in some ‘soft actuator sound’ or something. Also also, I’m of a suspicious nature, and when there is an abrupt cut between ‘robot grasps door’ and ‘robot opens door,’ I assume the worst. [ Figure ] Researchers at EPFL have developed a highly agile flat swimming robot. This robot is smaller than a credit card, and propels on the water surface using a pair of undulating soft fins. The fins are driven at resonance by artificial muscles, allowing the robot to perform complex maneuvers. In the future, this robot can be used for monitoring water quality or help with measuring fertilizer concentrations in rice fields [ Paper ] via [ Science Robotics ] I don’t know about you, but I always dance better when getting beaten with a stick. [ Unitree Robotics ] This is big news, people: Sweet Bite Ham Ham, one of the greatest and most useless robots of all time, has a new treat. All yours for about $100, overseas shipping included. [ Ham Ham ] via [ Robotstart ] MagicLab has announced the launch of its first generation self-developed dexterous hand product, the MagicHand S01. The MagicHand S01 has 11 degrees of freedom in a single hand. The MagicHand S01 has a hand load capacity of up to 5 kilograms, and in work environments, can carry loads of over 20 kilograms. [ MagicLab ] Thanks, Ni Tao! No, I’m not creeped out at all, why? [ Clone Robotics ] Happy 40th Birthday to the MIT Media Lab! Since 1985, the MIT Media Lab has provided a home for interdisciplinary research, transformative technologies, and innovative approaches to solving some of humanity’s greatest challenges. As we celebrate our 40th anniversary year, we’re looking ahead to decades more of imagining, designing, and inventing a future in which everyone has the opportunity to flourish. [ MIT Media Lab ] While most soft pneumatic grippers that operate with a single control parameter (such as pressure or airflow) are limited to a single grasping modality, this article introduces a new method for incorporating multiple grasping modalities into vacuum-driven soft grippers. This is achieved by combining stiffness manipulation with a bistable mechanism. Adjusting the airflow tunes the energy barrier of the bistable mechanism, enabling changes in triggering sensitivity and allowing swift transitions between grasping modes. This results in an exceptional versatile gripper, capable of handling a diverse range of objects with varying sizes, shapes, stiffness, and roughness, controlled by a single parameter, airflow, and its interaction with objects. [ Paper ] via [ BruBotics ] Thanks, Bram! In this article, we present a design concept, in which a monolithic soft body is incorporated with a vibration-driven mechanism, called Leafbot. This proposed investigation aims to build a foundation for further terradynamics study of vibration-driven soft robots in a more complicated and confined environment, with potential applications in inspection tasks. [ Paper ] via [ IEEE Transactions on Robots ] We present a hybrid aerial-ground robot that combines the versatility of a quadcopter with enhanced terrestrial mobility. The vehicle features a passive, reconfigurable single wheeled leg, enabling seamless transitions between flight and two ground modes: a stable stance and a dynamic cruising configuration. [ Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory ] I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this trick performed by a robot with soft fingers before. [ Paper ] There are a lot of robots involved in car manufacturing. Like, a lot. [ Kawasaki Robotics ] Steve Willits shows us some recent autonomous drone work being done at the AirLab at CMU’s Robotics Institute. [ Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute ] Somebody’s got to test all those luxury handbags and purses. And by somebody, I mean somerobot. [ Qb Robotics ] Do not trust people named Evan. [ Tufts University Human-Robot Interaction Lab ] Meet the Mind: MIT Professor Andreea Bobu. [ MIT ]