In the 1990s I built an electrically powered jumping ram - worked fairly well, but was compromised by my poor facilities and lack of machining ability.

Now I have both to a greater or lesser degree - I wondered about another go and if it could be used for RWs.

The original could jump a couple of feet in the air and was steered by moving the ram on a pair of gimbals. Fine movement was achieved by vibrating the ram and it moved in very small hops.

The key to it all is energy recovery which is near impossible with CO2. I never made it work at the time - but I can now! I reckon on about 20-50% recovery per jump, which gives you a fairly soft landing and of course extends the life.

Thought it would be interesting, but couldnt think of a suitable weapon - until now - an electric, kinetic axe / hammer powered by a flywheel. I think Ive solved most of the problems I can forsee. The big advantage of a flywheel powered axe is that you absorb the reaction torque to spinning up the flywheel slowly, then with the flywheel disconnected mechanically from the rest of the robot, dump the energy into the axe. The robot will still receive a reaction as the combination of axe and flywheel will try to rotate about their centre of mass. This would initially push the robot down, then backwards, then make it jump a little. If one were to time the little jump with a big jump from the ram - it might be able to jump pretty high!

Si