Boffins glue self-righting ROBO-VELOCIRAPTOR tail to car Biologists at the University of California in Berkeley have stuck an intelligent robotic tail on a toy car in an attempt to make clumsy droids of the future more stable. Slow-motion videos of jumping lizards had the team of engineers and biologists scrambling to their drawing boards to come up with the manmade rump-connected …
So you can use appendages to keep or regain balance? Come on! If you have ever walked on ice, seen a linedancer or a cat it should be rather obvious. In 1894 Étienne Jules Marey researched this on cats, and I do not think he was the first. (Technically it was how cats are able to turn in the air without external influence.) Oh, but I see, it is linked to search and rescue. Sigh, the default link for any new piece of tech that you have no specific need for, but think might be useful down the line. And this has to be the weakest link I have seen by far. Weaker than the link between putting cameras on phones to aid first responders by taking pictures of accidents and sending it to them.
I can't wait for their research into the colour of the sky on a blue sky day and how that can be vital knowledge for search and rescue people when they need to distinguish Na'vis from the sky. When I think about it that needs a "learning from nature, because nature is the bestest on everything and we humans are stupid"-angle. Maybe something about how some obscure insects use this to figure out the difference between the forest they live in and the sky.
Man up people. You did this because you wanted to make big robots because basically that is what we* all want to do, and you couldn't be bothered by solving this on your own and doing the math so you cheated by looking on how somebody else had done it, in this case nature.
*geeks
Of course it's obvious that you can flail an appendage to regain balance. Which is why it was looked into hundreds of years ago, as you mentioned. The difference here is that the boffins have come up with a working prototype that has the potential to improve the capabilities of useful remote vehicles.
As for them not being bothered about solving the problem or doing the math, do you have the faintest idea how complicated it is to understand an instinctive action like correcting a fall in terms (Mathematical/logical) that you can then 'teach' to a robot?
we're already adjusting the balance of small RC cars in midair by using torque on the rear wheels. Hit the electronic brake to nose down, cram the throttle to nose up. Works really well on those self balancing RC motorcycles with gyroscopes in the rear wheel.
That being said, a properly designed tail can also help compensate for roll, so a tail unit can help in both pitch and roll axes. As well as help physically right a vehicle that borks the landing.
Of course if they can manage both strong and flexible in a tail appendage, they should be able to do it for limbs and eliminate the need for wheels or tracks completely.
"Leaping lizards inspire super stable search bots"
How did the word "search" make it in to the headline? Because it's a 'bot, it must be a web-bot? It's a physical robot, and not a computer application. The Internet is rapacious enough without a bunch of Jurrasic-age velociraptors mining my data.
"in lizards, robots and dinosaurs" for the Best Latter Half of a Scientific Paper Title Award.
In fact, there really ought to be a journal for this - something like Transactions of the Society for Studying Stuff Common to Lizards, Robots, and Dinosaurs. That'd get the kids interested in science.
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