MIT’s Cheetah acquires new gates

In early March, Boston Dynamics posted a video (shown below) showing the Cheetah robot they are developing for DARPA running at 18 miles per hour (a new record for a robot running on legs), without any stabilization straps attached. More recently the MIT Biomimetic Robotics Lab has posted videos of their version of the Cheetah, first walking (no longer public, as of 08Aug2012), then trotting, with some stabilization (shown above). The MIT version appears to be more complex than the Boston Dynamics version, particularly in the way the legs are jointed, but also in the way the rear legs connect to the rest of the body, although it’s impossible to tell whether what appear to be vertebrae, in the MIT version, are actually functional as such, from the video alone.

Boston Dynamics’ Cheetah running at 18 mph…

John Payne

John Payne