Cheetah Robot Making Leaps and Bounds [VIDEO]

Cheetahs are known for their speed and agility, and now those hallmark factors have been incorporated into a newly developed robot.

The robotic cheetah - made up of a collection of gears, batteries, and electric motors that weighs about as much as its feline counterpart - is making leaps and bounds in the world of advanced robotics, as well as in real life.

This four-legged hunk of metal can sprint up to 10 mph, even continuing to run after clearing a hurdle. The MIT researchers behind the development estimate that the current version of the robot may eventually reach speeds of up to 30 mph - though that's still not as fast as a real cheetah, which can accelerate to 60 mph in a matter of seconds. It also doesn't appear to have the same bounding gait as a cheetah, instead hopping like a rabbit, with its front legs hitting the ground before its hind ones.

Running and jumping untethered is among this robot's talents thanks to a unique bounding algorithm that is programmed into each of the its legs. Each leg exerts a certain amount of force in the split second during which it hits the ground, in order to maintain a given speed: In general, the faster the desired speed, the more force must be applied to propel the robot forward - kind of like an actual sprinter.

"Many sprinters, like Usain Bolt, don't cycle their legs really fast," Sangbae Kim, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, said in a statement. "They actually increase their stride length by pushing downward harder and increasing their ground force, so they can fly more while keeping the same frequency."

This running technique allows the cheetah-bot to handle rougher terrain, such as a grassy field, as well as literally overcome obstacles in its path.

Kim credits this ability to the bot's custom-designed, high-torque-density electric motor, designed by Jeffrey Lang, the Vitesse Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT.

And rather than running on gasoline or a gasoline engine, the electric motor researchers used in the design allows the cheetah bot to be cat-like in both its quickness and quietness.

"Our robot can be silent and as efficient as animals," Kim explained. "The only things you hear are the feet hitting the ground. This is kind of a new paradigm where we're controlling force in a highly dynamic situation. Any legged robot should be able to do this in the future."

[Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)]