Army Building Robot Cheetah to Hunt Down Enemy Prey
Posted by
Sun Tzu Feb 27th 2011 at 4:09 am in
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Military Technology |
Comments (25)
This is kind of freaky.
Wired has
the goods:
“Boston Dynamics, maker of the Army’s robotic mule BigDog announced today that DARPA has awarded it a contract to build a much faster and more fearsome animal-like robot, Cheetah.
As the name implies, Cheetah is designed to be a four-legged robot with a flexible spine and articulated head (and potentially a tail) that runs faster than the fastest human. In addition to raw speed, Cheetah’s makers promise that it will have the agility to make tight turns so that it can “zigzag to chase and evade” and be able to stop on a dime.
Cheetah builds off work on the company’s previous four legged animal bot,
BigDog. It was built as a kind of unmanned pack mule, designed to carry equipment for troops on the battlefield. The robotic donkey could carry
300 lbs. over 13 miles on flat ground, take a swift kick and keep on moving. It’s creepy, lifelike movement can be seen on a number of videos online,
climbing over hills and snow and
hiking alongside soldiers, using GPS coordinates as its waypoints.”
http://bigpeace.com/stzu/2011/02/27/...own-the-enemy/