DailyDirt: Four-Legged Robot Friends

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

We've pointed out some cool bipedal robots before, but robots that get around without wheels are endlessly fascinating, and apparently, the internet loves cats and so do robot makers. It might not be as fun to name a quadruped robot after a goat or a large farm animal, so big cats seem to be the way to go when describing four-legged bots. Here are just a few examples of cat-like robots that aren't as cute as the real thing.

• Boston Dynamics has posted a video of its quadruped 'Wildcat' robot, galloping and bounding around a parking lot. This robot is a bit loud, moves pretty fast, and looks like a Terminator precursor that will end humanity. [url]
• A small cheetah cub bot is the fastest quadruped robot weighing under 66 lbs (which is apparently the cutoff for a robot lightweight division). It can run about 1.4 meters per second (~3mph), and it actually weighs about a kilogram (or 2.2 lbs). [url]
• A robotics team from South Korea is developing a Cheetaroid bot -- adding to the numerous robotics labs building cat-like bots. Early prototypes of the Cheetaroid use a single motor to drive all four legs, and amusingly, the concept art for the Cheetaroid resembles one of the Voltron lions. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: biomimicry, cheetaroid, locomotion, quadrupeds, robots, voltron, wildcat
Companies: boston dynamics