Highly explosive jumping is one of the survival keys to the organism evolution over the course of billions of years. This movement helps organisms to achieve flexible movement functions under various unstructured conditions. Through an in-depth understanding of biological jumping mechanism, the small-scale jumping robot has made great progress in function and performance. Taking the four stages of biological jumping movement (preparation for take-off, take-off, flight and landing) as the main line, this paper reviews the behavioral principle of organisms, introduces the dynamic characteristics and technology of the corresponding small-scale jumping robots, summarizes the challenges of existing research, and finally discusses the future development and potential of jumping robots.