And Mike Tolley, soon to be a professor of mechanical engineering here at the Jacobs School, does it again. This time, he presented a soft robot that uses controlled explosions to jump at the IROS 2014 conference in Chicago this week.
The three-legged robot made of silicon rubber is propelled by a butane-oxygen reaction. Check out the video to see it in action. Cool slow-motion shots start a little bit before the one-minute mark.
Full IEEE Spectrum story here.