DARPA's Robo-Cheetah Is Now Faster Than Usain Bolt 91
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."
Re:Wow a machine faster than a human. (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that much of the interest is also because of our persistent desire to more efficiently perform rescue operations and/or slaughter the locals in some downright hostile terrain.
Just as a pick-and-place provided with precise instructions and reels of neatly packaged and identical components can out-assemble a factory worth of nimble-fingered children; but couldn't beat a single freshman nerd at 'dig through the junk box and breadboard something', wheeled vehicles run like a bat out of hell on the terrain we lovingly build for them; but work increasingly poorly outside of that. At the cost of size and weight, larger wheels and/or tracks can muscle the problem a bit; but there are limits.
Legs, on the other hand, are mediocre at moving fast over well behaved terrain; but scrambling up mildly alarming slopes composed of loose rubble is practically routine...