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DARPA's Robo-Cheetah Is Now Faster Than Usain Bolt
pigrabbitbear writes "The Boston Dynamics Cheetah just clocked a 28.3 miles per hour sprint on a treadmill, and it's heading outdoors soon. At that speed, it could edge out the world's fastest man, Usain Bolt, in a dead sprint. (Bolt peaked at 27.78 miles per hour in his world-record-setting 100-meter dash back in 2009.) 'To be fair, keep in mind that the Cheetah robot runs on a treadmill without wind drag and has an off-board power supply that it does not carry,' admitted Boston Dynamics in a press release. 'So Bolt is still the superior athlete.' Nevertheless, the team hopes to drop these implements and have a freestanding speed bot by early next year. They're calling that model the WildCat."
Wow! our advancement in technology to make a machine that and travel faster then a human! Amazing. Perhaps we can make a machine that can fly too.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I thought it was kind of cool that the limbs did not really differentiate from their front rear pairs until the very end.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
like a machine that can out-ass Kim Kardshian or Shakira. It should also be able to out-ass Ahmo Hight, Tina Charest, Bambi4u and Jenna Von Oy.
holding the robot suspended in the air? Is that the power supply or this bot can't hold its weight/stability?
Apple has a patent on big cats.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
It looks to me like it's running backwards, there is something uncanny about it's gait. I love the way it does the "flip" at the end when the track gets too fast!
robo-cheetahs never robo-prosper!
Now cheetah? This platform is everything to everybody! Has it actually found a usable man-portable power source yet or what?
--- Do you believe in the day?
Once a bipedal robot can outrun the fastest human, Skynet will make it's move. No chance for humans to escape.
sudo make me a sandwich
Do you really trust the people who will ultimately control this kind of tech? Imagine 10,000 of them dropped from an airplane.
It really looks like that bot can crash any time. Shouldn't it be using its knees, elbows, ankles etc. too?
..am I the only one that's reminded of the matrix by looking at this?!
First Garry Kasparov, then Ken Jennings, and (soon) Usain Bolt. Sure, Albert Einstein or Leonardo Da Vinci or Mahatma Gandhi may be beyond robotic capabilities for quite a while yet, but you'd think that we could start replacing congressmen with much better robotic equivalents soon.
But the robotic dog was the way a Terminator should have been built from the get go. For more effective, can stand if it wants to to operate weapons, and what dog doesn't bark at another dog? Yes military and police dogs don't - but the other dogs bark at them and even the trained dogs can get riled up.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It's impressive that the robot continued movement at that speed.. but how quickly can it get up to that speed? I'm not trying to knock it, but the company started the comparison with Usain and the video shows it slowly getting up to that speed over about a minute, versus whenever Usain hit that speed (10 seconds).
I would assume that in robotics, as with cars and people, acceleration is harder than top speed, but I'm sure they'll get there.
Sarah, a cheetah at the Cincinnati Zoo, set the 100 meter record for land mammal in June at 5.95 seconds--four seconds better than Bolt. This works out to 37.6 mph. While a cheetah in the wild might not quite hit that mark, they are easily faster than Bolt or 'bot, and do so on unprepared terrain, and often with zigs and zags chasing prey. DARPA has a way to go.
At around 14 seconds...
also carries his own energy source with him.
What if we cut those chords hanging from the ceiling and the metal brace on the side?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
How long could a robot like this run - and how fast - if it did not have an external power supply?
One thing I'm wondering about in regard to Big Dog is whether it can actually be knocked over. More importantly, if we were to lay it down on its side, would it be able to get back up? If I'm relying on it in the battlefield or as an emergency responder, the last thing I want is 400 lbs. of my supplies getting stuck on the back of a robot that's ended up on its side and stuck. If it can get back up, then I'd say we have something that would be an awesome replacement for a Mars rover, since it can certainly climb steeper slopes, and I don't have to worry about it getting stuck anywhere.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Is there a number I can call to be placed on the national "Do not kill" registry?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
now we'll have more ways to kill each other, why don't we make it nuclear powered, drive it over babies,
while waterboarding commies and singing god bless america.
WildCat: faster than the fastest human, slower than the slowest cheetah
from Robocop. /You have 20 seconds to comply.
How about they replace those legs with wheels? what speed would that be, and what would they call it?
with razor-sharp leading edges..
The headless machine, funded by the Pentagon, reached 28.3mph (45.5km/h) when tested on a treadmill.
Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, has mixed feelings about the development.
"It's an incredible technical achievement, but it's unfortunate that it's going to be used to kill people," he suggested.
"But of course if it's used for combat, it would be killing civilians as well as it's not going to be able to discriminate between civilians and soldiers."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The comparison became irrelevant when they said that Usain Bolt is still the superior athlete. A machine can never be a superior athlete as its just a machine.
The headless machine, funded by the Pentagon, reached 28.3mph (45.5km/h) when tested on a treadmill.
Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, has mixed feelings about the development.
"It's an incredible technical achievement, but it's unfortunate that it's going to be used to kill people," he suggested.
"But of course if it's used for combat, it would be killing civilians as well as it's not going to be able to discriminate between civilians and soldiers."
Obviously it's going to be killing US soldiers too if it won't be able to discriminate between civilians and soldiers; all the things and people that get quoted by bbc no less...
Wrong. If somebody has a weapon, then they are a soldier. If they do not, then they will be considered a civilian until shown otherwise. The advantage of this is that it will likely be used as a forward drone that moves through enemy troops, even those in superior position.
Contrast this to bombs dropped by drones. They will kill those in and around the blast zone. Yes, they have made this better and better, but the fact is innocents still die. OTH, if a killer cheetah(s) and sit on the edge, ready to run, you can have 1 or more of these run through a pack and kill those that are a threat.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...welcome our new robo-cheetah overlords.
Uh huh...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”