Watch the cheetah-cub robot run: Cat-like grace without a head
The latest robot with legs is designed to mimic a house cat. Why? Because a robot tiger would have been too big.
Seriously, the smaller feline version of the robot was much more practical, Swiss researchers say, plus there’s much to be learned from cats, small or large.
Video shows the robot kitty’s legs spinning madly. According to Alexander Sproewitz, biomechanical roboticist and lead author of the new research, the headless robot, also referred to as a “cheetah-cub” robot, can run up to 1.4 meters per second. As the L.A. Times’ Amina Khan reported Monday, that’s still just a fraction of the speed a typical house cat can achieve.
The point is to create a more mobile robot.
“The very big potential for legged robots is application in rough terrain,” Sproewitz says in the video, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The cheetah cub, or house-cat robot, would be much more likely to traverse a rocky mountain, for instance, than a wheeled robot.
Other robots from the institute’s Biorobotics Laboratory are modeling on a salamander and a lamprey.
But there are other bio-inspired robots -- such as the RoboBee, perhaps the smallest flying robot, and a robotic cheetah that runs faster than Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world.
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