Cheetah is the fastest animals. Its speed can reach upto 70 mph. A robot cheetah is being developed by Boston Dynamics. This cheetah can run at speeds up to 18 miles per hour. The cheetah robot is a product of DARPA’s Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program. Darpa’s Cheetah Robot has set a land speed record for machines with legs. The Cheetah seeks to advance and improve robotic capabilities. Though the agency didn’t provide any specific examples, a robot, such as Cheetah, could help in various military applications.
The feat, revealed today on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s website, is aimed at developing combat robots that can outrun and evade humans on foot — and a 3:20 mile should just about do it. (The world record for humans is 3:43.) Boston Dynamics has been working on the cheetah-bot as part of DARPA’s Maximum Mobility and Manipulation program, or M3.
“This robot is galloping,” Boston Dynamics President Marc Raibert told the Boston Globe. “It’s the first time we’ve had a robot that gallops.” Back in February 2011 when the robot was first commissioned, Boston Dynamics President Marc Raibert said he saw no reason why the robot couldn’t go as fast a real cheetah (up to 70 mph), but he admitted that this would take some time to achieve.
The cheetah robot breaks the previous land-speed record of 13.1 mph. MIT Leg Lab’s stick-figurish Planar Biped robot set the record 13.1 mph. For what it’s worth, flesh-and-blood cheetahs can still run much faster, zooming at up to 70 mph.
Boston Dynamics’ headless Cheetah is inspired by real-life creatures, ranging from fish to hummingbirds to dogs. Boston Dynamics is building a human like robot code-named Atlas, which will be capable of walking and jogging upright, squeezing through narrow alleyways and grabbing things with its two robotic arms — once again, without a head.
The company says the robots can be used for humanitarian purposes such as emergency rescue and disaster response. Sure they can.
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