University of California, Berkeley, biologists and engineers have studied lizards and found that swinging the tail upward is the key to preventing a forward pitch.

The scientists subsequently added a tail to a robotic car they named Tailbot.

Tailbot’s design pushed the boundaries of control in robotics in an area researchers call inertial assisted robotics. They are now investigating the role of the tail in controlling pitch, roll and yaw while running.

Ref.: Thomas Libby et al., Tail-assisted pitch control in lizards, robots and dinosaurs, Nature, 2011 [DOI: 10.1038/nature10710]