It’s odd to see grown humans attempting to bounce off walls doing parkour. It’s another thing altogether to see a robot doing it. University of California Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab has created the world’s most vertically agile robot—capable of jumping to unimaginable heights. Meet SALTO, the Saltatorial Locomotion Terrain Obstacle that can jump up to 1 meter high from stand still, and do it faster than any other robot out there. The engineers behind SALTO drew inspiration from the galago, a small, nocturnal mammal native to Africa. These animals, also called thick-tailed bush babies, have longer hind legs that give them great leaping ability. They have the highest vertical jump of any animal, and served as inspiration for SALTO. The SALTO robot jumps higher than a bullfrog, but not as high as its animal inspiration, the galago. This chart doesn’t include explosion-powered robots, because, c’mon. Jump Frequency, in this chart, is how often the robot or animal make make…more