ROBOT OF THE WEEK: THE LEAPING ROBO-CHEETAH
by Hazed
The roboticists at MIT have come up with a big cat bot. Financed by DARPA, the US military’s mad scientist division, the robo-cheetah will run and bound across the ground, and it carries its own power source.
This isn’t the first cat-like robot that’s been developed – the Wildcat robot built by Boston Dynamics (now owned by Google) can bound along at 16 miles per hour but it uses a very noisy petrol engine.
By contrast, the MIT cheetah-bot uses a custom-built battery-powered electric engine which is much quieter. It can run about 10 miles an hour and bound over foot-high obstacles. The team think that an intensive study of the way cheetahs sprint will allow them to increase its speed to at least 30 mph.
The drawback is that its range is limited by the battery technology available today, but that should improve over time.
This robot, and the Wildcat, are modelled on big cats – specifically the cheetah – because of the way the animal uses its muscles to control its speed and leaping ability.
“Most robots are sluggish and heavy, and thus they cannot control force in high-speed situations,” Sangbae Kim from MIT said. “That’s what makes the MIT cheetah so special: You can actually control the force profile for a very short period of time, followed by a hefty impact with the ground, which makes it more stable, agile, and dynamic.”
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/15/mits_robot_cheetah_slips_the_power_leash_and_takes_off/
