Bicycle-inspired UMV robot performs wheelies, jumps and front flips at speed

The Robotics and AI Institute built the Ultra Mobility Vehicle (UMV), a 23.5-kg bicycle-based robot that reaches 8 m/s (18 mph). It uses a moving reaction mass and reinforcement learning to jump, hop and flip with just five actuated degrees of freedom.

• Weighs 23.5 kg, hits 8 m/s and uses five actuated degrees of freedom
• Trained with reinforcement learning in NVIDIA Isaac Lab, transferred to hardware
• Jumped onto a 1-meter platform and repeated the sequence 15 times
• Front flip reached about 17 rad/s and completed in under half a second