DARPA and Boston Dynamics have created their own four legged-robot that runs faster than the previous record of 18mph, earlier in the year a new record has been set at 28.3mph or 12.6 m/s which is faster than the fastest man on Earth, Usain Bolt, and this robot is called Cheetah.
To know what I am talking about and to appreciate how speed it was, you should watch first the video. I felt so amazed after watching this video and knowing that it is a robot. But also I felt very tired after watching it. The robot looks like want to get out and wanted to set free.
According to the report, the purpose of Cheetah or Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) s to significantly improve the performance of robots for military application. DARPA wants to find out why humans and animals could carry heavy loads across rough terrain.
For DARPA, instead of reinventing or recreate the wheel, they realized that almost 4 billion years of evolution, nature created some remarkably efficient organisms and for them, it makes a lot of sense to borrow from nature, rather than repeating through our own robotic development. That is why, DARPA and Boston Dynamics have been working on robots that nearly imitate biological physiology.
“Cheetahs happen to be a beautiful example of how natural engineering has created speed and agility across rough terrain. Our Cheetah bot borrows ideas from nature’s design to inform stride patterns, flexing and unflexing of parts like the back, placement of limbs and stability,” says DARPA program Manager Gill Pratt.
Boston Dynamic has already been working on the next version of Cheetah that they will call it WildCat. WildCat will be like the AlphaDog, and it will be a petrol-driven and be capable of running outside. Boston Dynamics won’t stop at only 28mph but they will be aiming for 50mph or more.
AlphaDog is also known as a Legged Squad Support System, LS3 is a robotic pack mule created by Boston Dynamic/DARPA that can move fairly slowly but can carry 400 pounds or 180 kilograms of gear over 20 miles in a rough terrain. See the video below to know more. AlphaDog is completely untethered while Cheetah has an off-board hydraulics and an arm that holds it in place.
Source: ExtremeTech
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