Hip Hoppity Hop

Hip Hoppity Hop was a project I conducted with Jenny Yi (designer) for Chuck Hoberman's Informal Robotics course at GSD, nominated for featured work for GSD social media channels (@HarvardGSD), in publications, and archived by the library for accreditation support for the departments, and as part of the record of the GSD.

With a background in physics, I took on the challenge of utilizing geometric energy storage in order to create a jumping robot. The robot is designed to leverage carefully placed, high-quality elastics as well as joints and folds that geometrically store energy in order to first “snap” the robot into a hop followed by an immediate return to its rest state. All components, including the body shape and density, electronics placement, elastic fits, elastic and inelastic materials used have been carefully designed, incorporated and tested to maximize this motion.