I'm honestly surprised that you're surprised - it's hard to judge what makes the problem difficult if you don't include landing. There's lots of ways to get something to 'jump' (like these toys [1]) that aren't too useful.
This isn't meant to be a criticism of your work, but an explanation of the impression it made in me. If it had been presented as "here's a new approach to jumping with these advantages", I'd have been impressed. Billing it as "the most agile jumping robot ever" while not being able to land it is setting your audience up for disappointment. My touchstone for jumping robots is that Boston Dynamics robot that can jump onto a building, and then I saw yours needing safety nets to jump a meter - you just don't want to set me up for that comparison. On the other hand, your video did get me excited to see where you go in the next few years - I definitely do want to see chain jumps exectued, even in controlled evironments.
OK, I see where you're coming from. The sandflea is a very practical, application-driven platform, and our robot is just a simple scientific tool meant to test new ideas about jumping. We were interested in the science of the new modes of locomotion so there wasn't much value in developing the landing for this work. We'll try to stick the landing next time.
That makes more sense; I, too originally read the post with a different type of robot in mind. After re-watching the video and re-reading the article (and of course reading these HN discussions), I'm appreciating Salto more for what it is: an excellent example of well-engineered biomimicry with a lot of potential for future robots.
This isn't meant to be a criticism of your work, but an explanation of the impression it made in me. If it had been presented as "here's a new approach to jumping with these advantages", I'd have been impressed. Billing it as "the most agile jumping robot ever" while not being able to land it is setting your audience up for disappointment. My touchstone for jumping robots is that Boston Dynamics robot that can jump onto a building, and then I saw yours needing safety nets to jump a meter - you just don't want to set me up for that comparison. On the other hand, your video did get me excited to see where you go in the next few years - I definitely do want to see chain jumps exectued, even in controlled evironments.
[1] https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/2e/87/10/2e87...