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