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DARPA's Robo-Cheetah Is Now Faster Than Usain Bolt

Posted by samzenpus on from the greased-lightning dept.

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."

3 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Neat but scary. by xclr8r · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  2. Re:Wow a machine faster than a human. by CRCulver · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The important thing about this kind of research is that the artificial solutions move in the same way as the biological models. That makes it easier to integrate them with biology. Amputees won't ever be happy to have lost a limb, but an artificial replacement that can outperform the original is a lot better than an artificial replacement that can do no more (and often does less) than the original.

    More fancifully, perhaps the Rat Things from Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash are now a possibility.

  3. Re:Wow a machine faster than a human. by Dyolf+Knip · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

    It's called Persistence Hunting, and it's awesome. There was a David Attenborough-narrated video of it on youtube that has been taken down, but basically they chase the animal for hours and hours. Being able to run isn't enough, you have to be able to quickly track it as well when it's out of sight. The upshot is that when you finally run it down, it's half dead with exhaustion already, and you can literally walk right up to it, spear in hand, and kill it.

    It's also a possible explanation for our relative hairlessness. Sweating apparently works better for cooling on bare skin.

    --
    Dyolf Knip