  During the last decade, tensegrity systems have been the focus of numerous
investigations exploring the possibility of adopting them for planetary landing
and exploration applications. Early approaches mainly focused on locomotion
aspects related to tensegrity systems, where mobility was achieved by actuating
the cable members of the system. Later efforts focused on understanding energy
storage mechanisms of tensegrity systems undergoing landing events. More
precisely, it was shown that under highly dynamic events, buckling of
individual members of a tensegrity structure does not necessarily imply
structural failure, suggesting that efficient structural design of planetary
landers could be achieved by allowing its compression members to buckle. In
this work, we combine both aspects of previous research on tensegrity
structures, showing a possible lattice-like structural configuration able to
withstand impact events, store pre-impact kinetic energy, and utilize a part of
that energy for the locomotion process. Our work shows the feasibility of this
proposed approach via both experimental and computational means.
