Prototype of a robot designed to correct its own roll in midair to always land on its feet. Made by Gabriel Konar-Steenberg and Anthony Kang for the Microprocessor Systems course at Harvey Mudd College, fall 2022. See website here.
Cats have a reputation for always landing on their feet. Many other animals exhibit similar behavior; in general, it has been shown that animals' use of body parts such as tails to reorient themselves in free fall is similar to the reaction wheels that spacecraft use to reorient themselves in space. These devices work by Newton's third law of motion: when the spacecraft acts to spin the reaction wheel in one direction, the wheel exerts an equal and opposite reaction propelling the spacecraft to spin in the other direction. Inspired by cats, here we set out to create a reaction wheel-powered robot that always lands on its feet: when dropped from 2 meters at any roll orientation with no angular velocity, the device should be able to correct its roll to zero. Here, we present a prototype of the design showing an accurate self-correcting response to a disturbance when suspended in midair.