The MIT robotic cheetah that runs and jumps like a big cat – RTVE

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Detail peculiar aspect of the robot, with its metal parts, cables and padded areas. Jose-Luis Olivares / MIT

ÁLVARO IBÁÑEZ ‘ALVY’

The cheetah is a land animal capable of exceeding 100 mph in sprints up to 500 meters. lethal amazing wonder of the animal world

But although our cars and motorcycles are much faster, would it be possible to build a quadruped robot to run faster than a cheetah?

Now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are it worked exactly, using the cheetah as an animal not only inspiring but also as ‘model ‘ when designing his robotic equivalent.

This worked with video images these animals in the open field by analyzing frame by frame how did their amazing sprinting and jumping on the ground.

Cheetah in mechanical version

The mechanical version currently only runs in the laboratory at about 16 kilometers per hour, but engineers hope to reach up 45 or 50 km / h in a reasonable time.

key is that the robot design focuses more on force that moves your legs that the frequency of the motion; it is important to control accurately even for very brief moments.

This “trick” is using the same animal and human runners. Thanks to this and its sensors can also get Robotic Cheetah different types of terrain suits.

Cheetah running

Unlike other similar robots that use hydraulic systems with much older engines, the cheetah uses MIT high-precision electric motors (brushless) making it less noisy while avoiding the friction.

The result is that thanks to the power of such engines, movement signals received from the sensors and the fine control of movements, cheetah can move gracefully ‘trot’ with confidence

In fact one of the most striking features small jumps move is can also make bigger jumps : when the system vision detects an obstacle simply multiply the strength to skip it.

The robotic cheetah uses the same techniques of Usain Bolt

Tripling the force exerted on the legs has come to overcome small obstacles a 30 inches high , which is not bad considering that he is less than a meter.

The robotic cheetah may not be as fast as Usain Bolt, but that the same techniques used: long and controlled with variable force on any terrain strides. Who knows if in the future we will see running loose in the fields, or even in some robotics Olympiad along with other congeners.