When you combine robots and cheetahs with military funding, you’re
bound to end up with something incredible. Robotics engineers from MIT
have spent over five years developing a battery-powered quadruped robot
capable of running as fast as a human being. And now they’ve trained
that robot to jump over hurdles—autonomously.
In a video released today, the team from MIT shows off their
DARPA-funded, four-legged harbinger of terror approaching and clearing
obstacles up to 18 inches tall while maintaing an average speed of 5
mph. The 70-lb robot (roughly the same weight as a female cheetah)
estimates the height, size, and distance of objects in its path, and
adjusts its approach to prepare a jump and safe landing—all without
slowing down.
“It’s the first legged robot to be able leap hurdles like this
autonomously,” says team leader Sangbae Kim. “Many other robots can move
faster on wheels, or maybe jump higher, but they can’t do it on their
own.” Kim and his colleagues will hold a live demonstration of the
robot’s running jump at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals in June, and
present the findings from this latest round of tests at robotics
conference in July.
The previous cheetah had most of the same hardware—except it was
blind. It used an IMU (internal measurement unit) with an accelerometer
and a gyroscope to keep its balance. These sensors—the same used to
control drones, satellites, and missiles—were combined with a
specially-designed algorithm that could help determine how much force to
exert and adapt to any changes in terrain and programmed speed. But the
robot still had no way of seeing objects in the way.
The new system implements a new LIDAR sensor system that grants the
robot the gift of sight, using reflections from lasers to map terrain.
Combined with the unique algorithm and all the other sensors in place,
the cheetah-bot can run and avoid oncoming obstacles all on its own,
adjusting to new information in about half the time of a single stride
and determining how much force its 12 electric motors will need to
deliver to its 3D-printed legs to clear any hurdles.
Kim and his colleagues are hoping this kind of design could be used
to create military robots or machines that can play a role in disaster
response. But there’s still plenty of work to do—the MIT robot was able
to complete 90 percent of the hurdles in tests on the indoor track, but
only 70 percent on the treadmill. Kim wants to improve the
vision-sensing systems to navigate through more complex environments.
The cheetah-bot is capable of running “blind” at 13 mph (average human
speed is 15 mph, *ahem*), and further testing will be needed to match or
surpass that speed on the vision-sensing model.
This isn’t the only cheetah robot being developed with DARPA money.
Robotics company Boston Dynamics is also using military money to develop
its own fast-moving quadruped. This one uses an off-board hydraulics
pump to reach speeds of up to 30 mph. Of course, it’s much louder and
less mobile than its MIT counterpart. But if the MIT engineers find a
way to increase the cheetah robot’s speed while retaining the low noise,
it will make for a very stealthy and energy-efficient machine. It’s not
clear what it will be tasked with, but “search-and-destroy” doesn’t
seem too farfetched…
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