Springtails, small bugs often found crawling through leaf litter and garden soil, are expert jumpers. Inspired by these hopping hexapods, roboticists at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of ...

In the summer of 2023, what seemed like tiny aliens turned up at the Wupatki National Monument. A visitor told park staff ...

When released, it snaps against the ground in as little as 20 milliseconds, flipping the springtail up to 6 cm into the air and 10 cm horizontally. Researchers at the Harvard John A Paulson School of ...

Now, HAMR is outfitted with a robotic furcula -- the forked, tail-like appendage tucked under a springtail's body that it pushes off the ground to send it Simone Biles-ing into the air.

Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas (Germany) carefully rolls over a log in his local forest to see fruiting bodies of slime mould and a tiny springtail. Alexis had to work fast to take this photograph, as ...

“It seemed natural to try to explore the use of a similar mechanism, along with insights from springtail jumps, for small jumping robots,” Wood said. The springtail’s furcula is also ...