Boston Dynamics is a company well known for creating military transport vehicles designed after real life animals. You may remember their “Big Dog” robot because of the numerous videos about how you couldn’t knock it over, or because it looks like an AT-AT Walker from Star Wars in its design sketches. Boston Dynamics has been contracted by DARPA to create a new robot they themselves described as a robotic attack dog (in so many words).

Boston Dynamics named the new project “Cheetah” after the animal they decided to use as a model. Cheetah-bot is expected to have the agility of a real cheetah and make sudden, quick turns and stops, a flexible spine to aid in its speed, and much of its big brother Big Dog’s all terrain programming. Boston Dynamics was able to make a quick and dirty mock up of where they would like to go with Cheetah-bot.

They also state they see their future creation being used for firefighting, human rescue, advanced agriculture, and vehicular travel. I can see Cheetah-bot being used to find downed soldiers or people in burning buildings, then transmitting a signal as to their location; however, I can’t comment on advanced agriculture because I am truly at a loss as to what Boston Dynamics wants to do in this field. Finally, the idea of riding Cheetah-bot like I was 5 years old and it was my pet dog just sounds uncomfortable. Regardless of what the final product will do, we can all look forward to really cool robot videos on Youtube.

Source: Tom’s Hardware