Tech

Watch This Bouncing Robot Balance With Its Tail

The tail is an appendage that is found throughout the animal kingdom and serves a variety of functions depending on the species. It can be used for everything from signaling to locomotion, but for a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, the most relevant use of the tail is how it can be use for stabilizing a body while it’s in motion.

In particular, this team was interested in stabilizing the body of its Jeroba robot, a bipedal machine which hops like a frog. Previously, the team had used the Jeroba’s tail as a mechanism to energize its spring legs, but in order for the bot to move around in this manner, the team had to figure out a way to stabilize the robot while it pitched and rolled in the air from jumping.

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To allow the tail to have the range of freedom it would need to offset the in-air rolling motion, the researchers connected the tail pole to two of the tail motors to “effectively create a spherical joint.” When the spherical joint, which functions as a roll controller, is combined with the tail’s function as a spring energizer, it offsets the rolling motion enough to allow the robot to maintain an acceptable degree of stability while hopping.

The future is adorable, the future is terrifying.