Building a Better Jumping Robot

Author: Jay Don Scott | August 11, 2013

            Physicist Daniel Goldman of Georgia Tech has one goal and that is to build a jumping robot to find more effective jumps.

            The purpose is to study the physics of jumping by building a jumping robot.  The hypothesis was that with the jumping robot he could observe jumps and learn how to make better jumps.  The procedure was to make the robot do different jumps and see which jumps were good.  With the data collected they learned that two jumps reached the same height. The first jump they increased the power of the motor and the robot jumped higher.  With the second jump the robot did a small jump then jumped again and reached the same height.  The conclusion was that with these jumps people could jump better and higher.

 

1.      Will these jumps help basketball players?

2.      Why did he use a robot to do the jumps?

3.      Why did he make the robot do 21,000 different jumps?

Citation/Reference:

Mone, G.  (April 8, 2013).  Building a Better Jumping Robot.  Discover Magazine.

Retrieved from: http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/03-building-a-better-jumping-robot