Falling cat robot lands on its feet

摘要

Cats are renowned for their ability to always land on their feet. When their body is dropped with no initial net angular momentum, they are able to rotate in the air using a variety of mechanisms, including the use of a variable difference between the moment of inertia of the front and back portions of their body due to the motion of their legs. The aim of this project is to build a robotic falling cat than can right itself in the air not dissimilar in appearance and mechanism to a biological cat. This paper describes the first steps of creating a simplified model and designing a simulation to demonstrate the mechanism of a prototype. Theory is presented to calculate input torques to achieve rotation from any drop angle or (sufficiently large) drop height, and SimMechanics is used to verify and simulate the model.