University of California, Berkeley, biologists and engineers studied how lizards leap successfully even when they slip and stumble. The lizards swing their tails upward to prevent them from pitching head-over-heels into a rock. After the team added a tail to a robotic car named Tailbot, they discovered that robots and lizards must actively adjust the angle of their tails just right to remain upright. This video shows, in normal and slow-motion, an Agama lizard after a leap from a surface with good traction versus a slippery surface, showing how the lizard uses its tail to prevent forward pitch, and Tailbot, a wheeled robot with a tail, taking a nose-dive off a cliff with a passive tail, but able to maintain its orientation with an actively controlled tail. Video courtesy of CiBER/UC Berkeley. For full story: newscenter.berkeley.edu
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