Army plans Terminator-style bipedal robot, cheetah-like combat robot faster than a human

Stories like this inevitably lead to the Terminator theme rolling our head. The U.S. Army is looking to build two new robots, which will supplement the BigDog robot developed to help soldiers carry equipment over rough terrain as a robotic mule. One will be a quadrupedal robot that will be faster than a human, dubbed the Cheetah. The second will be a humanoid-type robot dubbed Atlas.

Both are being developed by Boston Dynamics, which also developed the $18 million BigDog. Cheetah builds on top of BigDog. While equally four-legged, it will have a flexible spine, much like a real cheetah, and an articulated head. It will also have other similarities to a real cheetah, in that Boston Dynamics say it will be able to make tight turns, stop on a dime, and zigzag in either chase or evade modes.

Atlas, on the other hand, reminds us of nothing less than the aforementioned Terminator robots (except that it won't have a head). It looks very similar to a defleshed T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger model).

Atlas builds on a prior Boston Dynamics bipedal robot, Petman. Petman is used to test chemical weapons protection suits for the Army. It is capable of walking at 3 MPH and can keep its balance and stand, even if pushed.

Watch a few vidoes, one on BigDog, one on Petman, and one on an actual cheetah. Pay attention to how flexible a real cheetah's spine is; that is part of the reason it can run so quickly (up to 70MPH).

Via: Daily Mail