DARPA's Cheetah Bolts Past the Competition

DARPA's Cheetah robot—already the fastest legged robot in history—just broke its own land speed record of 18 miles per hour (mph). In the process, Cheetah also surpassed another very fast mover: Usain Bolt. According to the International Association of Athletics Federations, Bolt set the world speed record for a human in 2009 when he reached a peak speed of 27.78 mph for a 20-meter split during the 100-meter sprint. Cheetah was recently clocked at 28.3 mph for a 20-meter split. The Cheetah had a slight advantage over Bolt as it ran on a treadmill, the equivalent of a 28.3 mph tail wind, but most of the power Cheetah used was to swing its legs fast enough, not to propel itself forward.

Cheetah is being developed and tested under DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program by Boston Dynamics. The increase in speed since results were last reported in March 2012 is due to improved control algorithms and a more powerful pump.

DARPA's intent with the Cheetah bot and its other robotics programs is to attempt to understand and engineer into robots certain core capabilities that living organisms have refined over millennia of evolution: efficient locomotion, manipulation of objects and adaptability to environments. By drawing inspiration from nature, DARPA gains technological building blocks that create possibilities for a whole range of robots suited to future Department of Defense missions.

For more information on Cheetah and DARPA's other robotics programs, visit: http://go.usa.gov/rVqk.

To get the latest DARPA news, photos and videos, follow us on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/darpa.

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  Science & Technology

[AllDayPlayin]

cool now robot dogs can show real dogs how to chase cars.

[flitsies]

All these robots are seriously cool but why can't we the general public get some bits to play with?

For sure not the top notch heavy duty things but the some fun stuff to play around with perhaps some small walking figures that can run and jump and so on that can be controlled and told what to do.

In other words make some toys no one loves robots more than kids who grow up with them.

[manormaid]

We need to be afraid

[Li0n93]

MAXIMUM SPEED !!! :DDDDDD

[SINEKT]

There's nothing there. You see things!

[Fernando Salazar]

THANKS FOR YOUR COMMENT MIKELH, I UNDERSTAND I DO NOT HAVE MORE KNOWLEDGE IN THIS FIELD THAN THIS PEOPLE BUT I DO LIKE TO GIVE GOOD IDEAS, I LIKE MANY MODELS MADE WITH HANDS ON TOP AND MANY HD CAMERAS AND SENSORS, THE CHEETA NEEDS TO LEARN

[amhelloface1969]

Im no expert but wouldnt a long stride be more efficient for overall speed and keeping structural integrity intact

[crabapplesnaps]

lol at 0:12 something clearly broke off and flew at the camera. robots arent too tough.

[Hayden Schwab]

Impressive. But I doubt it can turn going that fast.For now at least.

[mikelh]

Because you know more about this than these guys who have dedicated their careers to this? LOL

Listen Fernando, this is what we call proof of concept, we test and build individual systems by themselves instead of building the final product with all it's massively complex systems at once. We engineers build these things in stages to minimize development risk. This is the right way to do it. We solve one engineering problem at a time, and at the end integrate everything together.