In the trenchesBoston Dynamics developing humanoid and robot cheetah

Published 7 March 2011

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Boston Dynamics, an advanced robotics developer, a contract to build “Cheetah,” a fast and agile robot capable of chasing and evading; the eighteen year old engineering company is also working on a humanoid robot named “Atlas” based on the design of “PETMAN,” an anthropomorphic robot for testing chemical protection clothing used by the U.S. army

Rendering of Boston Dynamics' robot cheetah // Source: geek-fu.com

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Boston Dynamics, an advanced robotics developer, a contract to build “Cheetah,” a fast and agile robot capable of chasing and evading. The eighteen year old engineering company is also working on a humanoid robot named “Atlas” based on the design of “PETMAN,” an anthropomorphic robot for testing chemical protection clothing used by the U.S. Army. Atlas has been said to resemble the T-800 sans head from the Terminator (1984-2009) series. As the name implies, Cheetah is a four-legged robot with a flexible spine and articulated head (and potentially a tail) that purportedly runs faster than the fastest human (26.7 mph). 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’s design takes from the company’s previous four-legged animal-bot, BigDog, an unmanned pack-mule, designed to carry up to 300 lbs. of equipment for troops over 13 miles of battlefield terrain. The robot, which uses GPS coordinates as waypoints, has been called “creepy” because of its jaunty and lifelike movement (“Four-legged robot simulates human motion” 28 March 2008 HSNW).

Aside from its unspecified military applications, Cheetah’s makers envision the robot sprinting to aid “emergency response, firefighting, advanced agriculture and vehicular travel.”

According to the designers at Boston Dynamics, Atlas will look more or less like the T-800 series of Terminators, minus the head and it will be able to walk like a human over rough terrain, crawling on its hands and knees when necessary, and turning itself sideways to slip through any narrow passages it encounters.

Atlas’s predecessor, PETMAN, was built to test out chemical weapons protective suits for the Army by “walking, crawling and doing a variety of suit-stressing calisthenics” and “simulat[ing] human physiology.” Designers made it capable of walking heel-to-toe at 3.2 miles per hour and staying upright even after it gets pushed.