This robot could leap higher than the Statue of Liberty — if we ever build it properly

Scientists have designed a robot that they claim could one day jump 400 feet (120 meters) — high enough to clear the Statue of Liberty in a single bound. It could even leap as high as 650 feet (200 m) on the moon. 

The high-jumping robot is designed for exploring difficult terrain that conventional robots would struggle to traverse, such as cave systems, forests and potentially other planets. It features unique prism-shaped legs with stretchable springs designed to maximize the transfer of elastic energy into kinetic energy during a jump. 

The researchers said their design could enable robots to jump to heights many times their own size, and more than six times higher than the current record. They published their findings May 24 in the journal Mechanism and Machine Theory. 

To demonstrate their design theory, the scientists built a 15.7 inch (40 cm) tall robot that could jump more than 5 feet (1.6 m) in the air.

"While jumping robots already exist, there are several big challenges in the design of these jumping machines, the main one being to jump high enough to overcome large and complicated obstacles," study co-author John Lo, a research associate in space robotics at the University of Manchester, said in a statement. Our design would dramatically improve the energy efficiency and performance of spring-driven jumping robots."

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Conventional robots are typically equipped with wheels or, in the case of machines like Boston Dynamics' Atlas and Spot, two or four legs. While these designs work well on simple terrain, they aren't adept at tackling obstacles like cliffs, or steep and uneven surfaces. This is where a jumping design comes in handy.