In September of last year, DARPA introduced the world to its cheetah robot. It can run at speeds up to 29 MPH, but it posed no threat to humanity as it was confined to a treadmill and the connecting wires that powered it. Now that very same robot has been set free.
DARPA and Boston Dynamics introduced WildCat to the world this week. It’s the same cheetah robot as before, but now it’s fully autonomous. As long as the robot is on flat terrain, it can reach speeds up to 16 MPH. It wouldn’t be able to outrun sprint runners like Usain Bolt just yet, but it would have no problem catching the rest of us.
Pretty amazing, right? As the engineers continue to work on WildCat, they’ll no doubt reach a point where it will be able to reach test lab speeds on open terrain. Once it reaches that point, there’s no salvation for humanity. The robots will even win the Olympics just to rub it in our subjugated faces.
[Image: BostonDynamics/YouTube]