Four-legged robot Cheetah set new running record

BEIJING, March 6 (Xinhuanet) -- A four-legged robot known as Cheetah goes up to 18 mph while running on a lab treadmill, setting a new land speed record, said the Boston Dynamics on Monday.

The previous speed record was 13.1 mph and was set in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1989, according to a news release on Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) website.

The Cheetah, developed by the Massachusetts-based engineering company Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA, is part of DARPA’s Maximum Mobility and Manipulation program designed to make robots faster, cheaper and more effective.

The robot’s movements are modeled after real cheetahs, the fastest animals on the land. “The robot increases its stride and running speed by flexing and un-flexing its back on each step, much as an actual cheetah does,” DARPA writes.

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