Roboticists have designed all sorts of jumping robots over the years, and many of them have been inspired by biology. But, as diverse as the natural world is, evolution hasn't cracked every option.

Roboticists have designed all sorts of jumping robots over the years, and many of them have been inspired by biology. But, as diverse as the natural world is, evolution hasn't cracked every option.

A new primate-inspired robot has a feature that is leaps and bounds above the rest. Scientists from U.C. Berkeley invented a one legged robot named Salto -- short for'Saltatorial Locomotion Terrain Obstacles' -- that can jump higher than any other untethered robot. In a Science Robotics study, the team said Salto can jump at a rate of 1.75 meters (or almost 6 feet) per second, a rate 56 percent better than all other jumping bots. The team created Salto after watching search and rescue workers maneuver through rubble. "Our goal was to have a search and rescue robot small enough not to disturb the rubble further," Duncan Haldane, roboticist and co-inventor of Salto, said in a press conference, and to "move quickly across the many kinds of rubble produced by collapsed buildings."