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Continuous leaping is an effective locomotion strategy for traversing cluttered and unstructured environments. However, achieving autonomous continuous leaping in soft machines remains challenging because it requires recyclable energy storage and release, reliable self-resetting for relaunch, aerial stability, and adaptability across diverse terrains. Here, we report a self-resetting soft ring jumper capable of autonomous, continuous, and stable horizontal leaping under constant infrared illumination. The jumper consists of a photothermally responsive liquid crystal elastomer ring integrated with a rigid V-shaped tail. Under illumination, the soft ring self-twists to store elastic energy while simultaneously inducing out-of-plane bending of the tail through geometric constraints imposed by the rigid tail. Once a critical threshold is reached, snapping of the rotating rigid tail against the ground launches the ring into the air. During flight, the ring autonomously untwists to recover its original shape and self-resets, enabling repeated cycles of energy storage, release, and relaunch. The snapping mechanism and full leaping dynamics are captured by combined static and dynamic Cosserat-rod models. By tuning geometric asymmetry and the center of mass, the jumper transitions among crawling, directional leaping, and vertical jumping. Optimized designs achieve vertical jumps exceeding 80 body heights and directional leaps over 3 body lengths. Beyond controlled motion on flat surfaces, the jumper demonstrates resilient multimodal locomotion across slopes, parallel hurdles, water–land interfaces, and diverse natural terrains including grass, sand, rocks, mulch, and water surfaces. This work can find potential applications in environmental navigation, swarm robotics, and unstructured terrain navigation. 

Multistable metastructures can switch between multiple stable configurations without requiring locking forces. However, their potential for creating reconfigurable robots—metabots—capable of adapting to changing environments remains largely unexplored. Here, we report harnessing developable surface–based multistable thin-shell metastructures with high reconfigurability for adaptive manipulation and locomotion. These multistable metastructures are constructed by cutting and bonding thin polymer sheets with patterned cutouts, enabling programmable prestored elastic energy. A single unit achieves up to 20 stable configurations, while a four-unit assembly yields 256 reconfigured states, through simple folding of dynamic virtual creases. When integrated with thin sheet–based, multiresponsive soft actuators, these metastructures become highly adaptive metabots, including universal, noninvasive bistable soft grippers; magnetic multigait jumpers; and dual-responsive crawlers powered by magnetic and electroactive actuation. These systems exhibit high adaptability and maneuverability, capable of navigating complex terrains and confined environments via on-demand shape transformations, paving the way for energy-efficient, reconfigurable soft robotic platforms.