Carbon-Fiber Cheetah Robot Will Run As Fast As The Real Thing
A cheetah can run faster than any other animal. A gecko’s feet can stick to almost any surface without using liquids or surface tension. And some roaches scurry at nearly 50 times their body length in one second, which, scaled up to human levels, can be around 200 miles per hour.
MIT professor and robotic designer Sangbae Kim has looked at members of the animal kingdom in the past and successfully replicated their impressive abilities–two of which being the Stickybot,which can climb walls similar to a gecko and the iSprawl, a robot which mimics a cockroaches movement.
Kim’s next animal that he and his students are going to attempt to imitate is the cheetah. Current robots can be very efficient on flat terrain but in rough areas speed and mobility is very limited. The PackBot, for instance, which is used by the U.S. Military is barely able to go 5MPH.
Kim hopes that over the next 18 months he and his students are able to create a prototype that will have enough power to reach 70 MPH quickly.
The first step will be to create a computer model to calculate the optimal limb length, weight, gait and torque of the hip and knee joints.
The biggest challenge in this project won’t be the structure, but getting enough power from a motor to get to the desired speed quickly, says Kim.
If successful this could be a huge break through in the fight to bring functional sci-fi-esque robots to the world we live in. We will still be leagues away from an I,Robot or Star Wars world but imagine the uses of a robot capable of covering terrain quickly and efficiently! As long as it can handle stairs better than the Honda Asimo and can take control of our hands forcing us to learn an instrument by endless repetition then we will be impressed.
Then again, this could also be a huge break through in a robot uprising leading to the eventual destruction of the human race. One way or another, this is cool. [wired]
