MIT’s Cheetah Robot Jumps Running Over Obstacles

MIT’s famous four legged Cheetah robot learned a new trick. Cheetah sees, clears hurdles while bounding at 5 mph. Watching Cheetah accomplish this is like watching a child master something new. Video below.

This will blow your Geek Mind. MIT researchers thought the Cheetah robot a new amazing capability. The four legged robot can see and jump over hurdles as it runs. The video below shows cheetah first on a treadmill doing running jumps. Later in the video cheetah is running free without a safety harness. And the footage is nothing short of amazing to watch.

To get a running jump, the robot plans out its path, much like a human runner: As it detects an approaching obstacle, it estimates that object’s height and distance. The robot gauges the best position from which to jump, and adjusts its stride to land just short of the obstacle, before exerting enough force to push up and over. Based on the obstacle’s height, the robot then applies a certain amount of force to land safely, before resuming its initial pace.

In experiments on a treadmill and an indoor track, the cheetah robot successfully cleared obstacles up to 18 inches tall — more than half of the robot’s own height — while maintaining an average running speed of 5 miles per hour.

“A running jump is a truly dynamic behavior,” says Sangbae Kim, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “You have to manage balance and energy, and be able to handle impact after landing. Our robot is specifically designed for those highly dynamic behaviors.”

Kim and his colleagues including research scientist Hae won Park and postdoc Patrick Wensing will demonstrate their cheetah’s running jump at the DARPA Robotics Challenge in June, and will present a paper detailing the autonomous system in July at the conference Robotics: Science and Systems.

VIA MIT.

We reported first about Cheetah back in 2012 when it achieved running speeds faster than Usain Bolt.