ETH Zurich Robotic Systems Lab student focus project (Switzerland) SpaceHopper (1)

Not soldStudent research robot supported by ESA Education.

Not for sale (research)Not programmableResearchLow gravityThree legsRL control

Not soldShipping: N/A. Not available; a university research robot.

Remote control: Not possible. A lab prototype not distributed outside ETH Zurich.

Project site ↗arXiv paper (ICRA 2024) ↗

Overview

A three-legged hopper designed for asteroids and small moons, where wheels lose traction and each jump can carry a robot far. Instead of reaction wheels it uses learned leg motions to twist its body mid-flight and land feet-first, demonstrated on a gimbal (within 9.7°) and on a counterweight rig in Earth gravity. Built by a ten-student ETH team from 2022–2023 and published at ICRA 2024, with parabolic-flight testing planned as the next step.

Specifications

Category	Jumpers & hoppers · Jumping & hopping robots
Released	2023
Availability	Not for sale (research)
Programmability	No programmability
Best for	Professionals & labs
Vision sensors	No vision sensors
Actuators	Brushless / direct-drive motors
Audio	No audio
Compute type	NVIDIA Jetson, Arduino / ESP32 / microcontroller
Remote control	Not programmable
Size	245 mm body, 5.2 kg; three legs of 1.17 kg each
Locomotion	Three symmetric legs with 3 DoF each (9 motors over EtherCAT); hops in low gravity and swings its legs to reorient in flight without flywheels
Compute	NVIDIA Jetson Nano plus STM32 safety microcontroller
Camera	None (camera proposed for future visual-inertial odometry)
Sensors	Three laser range finders, joint encoders, battery management and temperature sensing
Runtime	Not published (7S Li-ion pack)
Speed	In simulated Ceres gravity (0.029 g), jumps to commanded targets up to 6 m away
SDK	None public; deep-RL (PPO) policies trained in Isaac Gym