Nature
PUBLISHED
Robots are either creepy or getting too intelligent for their own good, so thank goodness scientists are back at work making cute ones.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.But this little hopper is more than just a cute robot, it’s helping robotic engineers understand how tail-like structures can aid a bipedal robot in stabilizing itself mid-air, just as some animals do in nature.
The robot is called “Penn Jerboa”, named after its biological inspiration the jerboa and its creators from the University of Pennsylvania. It was recently shown off at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (iROS) 2016 in Daejeon, South Korea. You can learn more about the technical side of the robot in the researchers' report.
[H/T: Motherboard]
