The military’s robot army continues to evolve by leaps and bounds. Quite literally, now that some of the ‘bots have grown tails.

A research team at the University of California, Berkeley, funded in part by the Army Research Laboratory, have come up with a nifty new way to help robots stay upright and stable, even when making precarious hops and strides over difficult terrain. Inspired by the stabilizing powers that tails imbue in lizards (and, eons ago, dinosaurs) the group decided to add similar tails to their robots.

The precise angle at which a lizard flexes its tail, in response to the...