Learning from these principles, he then spliced carbon-fiber backbones into a soft silicone shell and observed takeoff velocities climb to 13 m/s and jump height to 25 body lengths (3 m)! Even a basketball rim can’t hold it back. 🏀🚀 #SoftRobotics

Inspired, @chemicalsunnyraj.bsky.social built Soft Jumping models (SoftJM) prototypes that mimic this kink instability: reversible kinks boost elastic energy storage 4–5× under a force ceiling, giving stronger, faster jumps without blowing “muscles.” 🤖 #BioinspiredDesign

Zooming in, we saw that the worm bends its body so much that it can form a kink at the bend! Kinks are usually detrimental in structures. For example, Kinked straws are useless. But this nematode can reversibly kink its body and keep jumping!

What holds this tiny spring as it stores energy? A microscopic water bridge at the ventral-ventral contact acts as a liquid latch, balancing the bending force until the water bridge breaks. And then off it goes into the air!

Using Cosserat rod modelling, @itiwari93.bsky.social created a simulated worm that jumps not only by mimicking the shape of the worm, but also from a wide variety of initial postures that the worm does not make!

Looking at multitudes of jumps, we found that these worms can steer their jumps! By tweaking head (α) and loop (θ) angles, they bias their center of mass and can choose forward or backward takeoff.

Ever watched a legless worm launch itself 20 body lengths in just 150μs? This incredible high-speed video by Victor shows Steinernema carpocapsae curling into an α-loop, snapping open in μs, and soaring at ~1.5 m/s. We wanted to understand how it stored this energy & develop a robotic mechanism.