riddle me?

Happy Tuesday, folks!

Welcome to This Week in Engineering

Any specific game you'd like??
Let me know and I’ll be happy to feature it in the next edition!

Want to get featured in the next edition?
(you know how it works 😉)

⦁ This crystal-clear chip bends and powers up

⦁ New tech brings night vision straight to your face

⦁ Donut-shaped spacecraft survives the heat like a legend

In a lab at Georgia Tech, researchers have built a robot that does something pretty strange.

It’s only five inches long, it doesn’t have legs, and yet it can jump 10 feet into the air.

That’s about 24 times its own body length, roughly the same as a person leaping onto the roof of a three-story building.

The idea came from nematodes.

These are tiny roundworms, thinner than a human hair, that live in soil, water, and even inside animals.

Some of them are parasites. Others help farmers by killing pests.

What caught the researchers’ attention, though, was how some nematodes move. When they need to latch onto a host, they jump, and they do it without legs or muscles like ours.

Using high-speed cameras, the team watched these worms contort their bodies into tight shapes.

⦁ To jump backward, a nematode bends into a shape like a person doing a deep squat, tightening at the middle.
⦁ To jump forward, it does the opposite: it points its head straight and arches its rear. In both cases, the worm stores energy by forming a sharp kink in its body, then releases it all at once to launch into the air.

That kink is the key.

Most of the time, kinks are a problem.

In hoses, they stop water. In arteries, they can cause strokes. But nematodes use kinks to their advantage. The Georgia Tech team realized they could do the same thing with a robot.

So they built a soft robot shaped like a rod, made of silicone with a carbon-fiber spine.

It mimics the worm’s motions: bend, store energy, release, jump.

The robot can leap in either direction, just like the nematode, depending on where the kink forms. And it’s fast; the energy is released in just a tenth of a millisecond.

To get there, the researchers started with video footage of the worms.

Then they ran simulations to understand the physics. From there, they designed prototypes and reinforced them to survive repeated jumps. The final version is simple, tough, and surprisingly powerful for its size.

It could be useful in places where wheels and legs don’t work well, like disaster zones, rocky terrain, or even other planets.

#Ad

Find out why 1M+ professionals read Superhuman AI daily.

In 2 years you will be working for AI

Or an AI will be working for you

Here's how you can future-proof yourself:

1. Join the Superhuman AI newsletter – read by 1M+ people at top companies

2. Master AI tools, tutorials, and news in just 3 minutes a day

3. Become 10X more productive using AI

Join 1,000,000+ pros at companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon that are using AI to get ahead.

Sign up and start learning AI

If you had a robot that could jump 10 feet high without legs, what would you use it for? I'd love to see these deployed for home security - imagine a burglar breaking in only to see a bunch of silicone rods suddenly launching themselves at their face.

Or maybe wildlife monitoring in forests where ground movement is difficult. These could hop from spot to spot, collecting data without needing to navigate fallen trees or dense undergrowth.

What's your most creative idea for these jumping robots?

Going back to nostalgia, remember those school days when you’d fill in the blanks to test your knowledge?

Well, here’s your chance to relive that!

First person to respond correctly gets a shoutout in next week's newsletter!

• Senior Water Resources Engineer: Gannett Fleming
  Saving water like it's the last season of your favorite show.

• Field Service Engineer II : GE HEALTHCARE
  Fixing life-saving machines before your coffee even kicks in.
  

• Robotics Research Engineer: Texas A&M Engineering
  Building robots that might just outsmart your group chat.

Want to list your job with us?

Hit reply and we’ll get it to over 15k engineers : )

Reach 15k+ engineers from North America, mostly from ENR500 companies, in a highly engaged and contextually relevant environment.

Perfect for targeting a specific audience that's actively involved in engineering, tech, and construction.

Why Advertise with Us?

⦁ Targeted Exposure: Reach professionals with specific interests in engineering fields.
⦁ Engaged Audience: The content we provide keeps the audience deeply engaged and connected.
⦁ Contextually Relevant: Your ad will be placed where it matters the most.

Let’s chat about how we can help you reach the right people!