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This Hopping Robot Is As Cool As The Desert Rodent That Inspired It

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Tom Hale

author

Tom Hale

Senior Journalist

Tom is a writer in London with a Master's degree in Journalism whose editorial work covers anything from health and the environment to technology and archaeology.

Senior Journalist

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University of Pennsylvania via IEEE Spectrum/Youtube

Robots are either creepy or getting too intelligent for their own good, so thank goodness scientists are back at work making cute ones.

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.

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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]


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  • tag
  • robot,

  • mammal,

  • cute,

  • hop,

  • jumping,

  • jerboa

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