Researchers at ETH Zürich are very good at keeping robots standing upright. Back in 2022, the school’s robotics team taught the quadrupedal ANYmal robot how to hike up mountains without falling over.

Humans make walking look easy, but that’s only because walking is a very efficient process in which our tendons and muscles work in conjunction to store and release 40% more energy than we exert.

The authors with their robot. From left to right: Alberto Comoretto, Harmannus A.H. Schomaker, Johannes T.B. Overvelde. A research team from AMOLF in Amsterdam created a soft robot that walks, hops, ...

Although soft-bodied robots themselves can be fairly simple, low-cost devices, they typically require complex onboard electronics to control their locomotion. Such is not the case with a new bot, ...