Future robots will navigate perilous, remote environments with resilience and autonomy. Researchers have proposed building robots with compliant bodies to enhance robustness, but this approach often sacrifices the autonomous capabilities expected of rigid robots. Inspired by tensegrity architecture, we introduce a tensegrity robot -- a hybrid robot made from rigid struts and elastic tendons -- that demonstrates the advantages of compliance and the autonomy necessary for task performance. This robot boasts impact resistance and autonomy in a field environment and additional advances in the state of the art, including surviving harsh impacts from drops (at least 5.7 m), accurately reconstructing its shape and orientation using on-board sensors, achieving high locomotion speeds (18 bar lengths per minute), and climbing the steepest incline of any tensegrity robot (28 degrees). We characterize the robot's locomotion on unstructured terrain, showcase its autonomous capabilities in navigation tasks, and demonstrate its robustness by rolling it off a cliff.

翻译：未来的机器人将凭借其韧性与自主性，在危险、偏远的复杂环境中进行导航。研究人员已提出通过构建具有柔性躯体的机器人来增强其鲁棒性，但这种方法往往以牺牲刚性机器人所具备的自主能力为代价。受张拉整体结构启发，我们提出了一种张拉整体机器人——一种由刚性支柱和弹性肌腱构成的混合型机器人——它同时展现了柔性结构的优势和执行任务所需的自主性。该机器人在野外环境中表现出卓越的抗冲击能力和自主性，并在技术前沿取得了多项进展，包括：能够承受从高处跌落（至少5.7米）的剧烈冲击；利用机载传感器精确重构自身形状与方位；实现高速运动（每分钟行进18倍杆长）；以及攀爬迄今为止张拉整体机器人中最陡的斜坡（28度）。我们表征了机器人在非结构化地形上的运动特性，通过导航任务展示了其自主能力，并通过将其滚落悬崖验证了其鲁棒性。