Nature is usually said to be the most perfect machine. The organs of animals have evolved over thousands of years allowing them to adapt to different conditions to finally survive and become what they currently are. So it is not surprising that researchers are looking at nature and evolution to create increasingly perfect robots. This is the case of a new car that uses a tail based on lizards and dinosaurs to achieve greater stability.
Biologists and engineers at the University of California studied the function of lizards’ tails to achieve perfected movements and jumps. Their surprise came when they discovered that the angle and elevation of the tail is vital to achieve enviable stability and thus compensate for the rotation of its body.
To reach this conclusion, the research group led by Professor of Integrative Biology, Robert J. Full, used high-speed video systems. Thanks to these, they were able to analyze the different jumps of the African red-headed lizard Agama agama. In addition, the study has shed some light on the function of the tail in living beings and in dinosaurs, since its role is still one of the great mysteries to be learned within zoology, although there are various theories. According to this new research, two-legged theropod dinosaurs used their long tails to stabilize themselves when avoiding obstacles. As Full himself points out, this function would be used by dinosaurs such as the velociraptor from Jurassic Park.
Generation of robots with a tail
As Mark Cutkosky, a mechanical engineer at Stanford University in Palo Alto , explains in Science magazine, the work “offers valuable evidence for the next generation of mobile robots.” And it is that as Robert J. Full himself points out, ” the inspiration in the lizard’s tail will probably lead to much more agile search and rescue robots, as well as robots with a greater capacity to detect biological, chemical or nuclear dangers.
And, after verifying the importance of the tail for these lizards, the researchers placed a tail on a robotic car to stabilize the device in a jump down a ramp. When the tail of the tailbot, as the car was called, was immobile, the device would rush uncontrollably, while by including a gyroscope that tilted the appendage during the jump, it made the car land horizontally.
The tail of animals is one more example of the importance of evolution not only for their survival in the past, but for the creation of new robotic movement systems of the future.
