14 DAY TRIAL // Barrel rolls are pretty dangerous and adrenaline-pumping tricks when you're in a jet, but they're a lot more dangerous when you perform them on a bike mid-leap, or some other type of ground transport. Mostly because you don't have miles between yourself and the ground to recover your proper position and trajectory.
And yet people like to try and make rolls, flips and turns mid-air anyway. So it should have been expected that we would give robots the same ability the first chance we got.
Case in point, Callen Fisher and Amir Patel at the University of Cape Town have built the FlipBot.
Technically, it's not exactly a robot. Still, a car with a lizard tail had to be called something meaningful at the very least. And since its whole purpose is to demonstrate the incredible ability to flip in mid-air, the name pretty much fits.
Well, technically, the thing does barrel rolls, but they look cool anyway. Not sure how this will find practical applications, if any, but it does act as testament to the skill humans have gained in the programming of synthetic constructs. Biomimicry, too, appears to be getting a lot of attention.
This also marks a departure from the normal focus of biomimicry, which is to emulate the way we humans move, instead of the animal kingdom.
