MacGregor Campbell, contributor Leaping lizards can land
steadily on vertical walls by adjusting their tails mid-flight.
Taking inspiration from the reptiles, Robert J. Full at the
University of California, Berkeley and his team have equipped a
new wheeled robot with a weighted tail to mimic this ability.
The artificial tail can be actively controlled to swing up or
down, counteracting the mass of the robot's main body. In this
video, you can see how it helps the robot when it's dropped
nose-first during a trial. With a quick swing of the tail, the
robot rights itself and lands with its wheels on the ground. A
second clip shows how the tail is also useful during ground-
based manoeuvres. Rolling over bumps causes a tail-less version
of the bot to lose control, landing helplessly on its side. But
with the extra appendage, it gets a slight boost which keeps it
horizontal, allowing it to hop over the obstacles and continue
on its way. Such biologically inspired engineering could be
incorporated into robots operat