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HopTo

Manufacturer

CityU Hong Kong spin-off making the Hopcopter/Hop-1, a quadcopter with an elastic leg that hops on a spring to cut energy use to about 25% of hovering.

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Company Overview

HopTo Technology Co. Limited (brand HopTo) is a Hong Kong start-up that commercializes the Hopcopter, a hybrid robot that can both hop and fly. It combines a multi-rotor aerial platform with an elastic leg. The company was formed by a team from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) that had developed laboratory versions of the Hopcopter. It is a seed-fund team in CityU's HK Tech 300 entrepreneurship programme, and Wang Fangzheng is the CEO and person-in-charge.

The underlying research came from Professor Pakpong Chirarattananon's group in CityU's Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. It was published in Science Robotics in 2024 as "An agile monopedal hopping quadcopter with synergistic hybrid locomotion", with Dr. Bai Songnan and Dr. Ding Runze as co-first authors. The lab prototype paired a spring-loaded telescopic leg with a nano quadcopter weighing about 35 g. It reached a maximum jump height of 1.63 m and a vertical speed of 2.38 m/s, could take off mid-hop and fly as a regular quadcopter, and used its leg as a bumper when it hit walls or uneven ground.

HopTo's first product, the Hop-1, is a quadcopter with a single carbon-fiber telescoping leg and a spring or rubber-band suspension. Ground contact lasts tens of milliseconds, and each hop has under 45 ms of airtime. The motor duty cycle is about 0.28, and the robot can accelerate at more than 14 g. By bouncing on its passive spring instead of hovering, the robot uses about 25% of the energy of continuous flight, which gives nearly four times the endurance. Published figures are more than 6 minutes of hovering or more than 20 minutes of hopping on a 250 mAh battery, and more than 50 minutes of hopping on a 650 mAh battery. The engineering prototype has passed a 2 m drop test. The company describes Hop-1 as its first remote-controlled Hopcopter product and linked it to ICRA 2026; it ran a public survey ahead of the first-generation launch, for which no price or release date had been announced.

Target applications listed under the HK Tech 300 programme are lunar exploration, surveying, firefighting, rescue and entertainment. In interviews, the company names indoor industrial inspection as its near-term focus. Its roadmap runs from a remote-controlled toy to a development platform and then a fully intelligent robot, with a five-year goal of an AI-powered outdoor companion. The team won a Second Prize at the 9th National Youth AI Innovation and Entrepreneurship Conference in 2024. The team has seven members, including master's students, postdoctoral researchers, PhDs and alumni from CityU's Biomedical Engineering and Creative Media departments.

Funding to date is the CityU HK Tech 300 Seed Fund (2025).

Capabilities & Activities

Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:

Applications & Industries

Product Categories

Products & Solutions

Hop-1

Remote-controlled quadcopter with a carbon-fiber spring leg that hops to extend endurance about fourfold.

Hopcopter

CityU monopedal hopping quadcopter research platform published in Science Robotics (2024).

Partnership & Notable clients

Associating Events

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Contact HopTo

WEBSITE

https://www.hoptotech.com/

HEADQUARTERS

Hong Kong , Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Company Facts

Founded

-

Primary Role

Manufacturer

Company Size

-

Primary Region

Asia-Pacific

Annual Sales

-

Funding Stage

Grant / Non-profit

Funding Total

-

Keywords

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