Nature has created an amazing variety of animals that move in different ways. for swimming, fins tend to be optimal while for flying, wings are much better. For land movement, legs do well, but there are different types and numbers of legs varying between two and four. To create a fast moving robot, MIT engineers decided to model their robot design after the cheetah.

“When the robot is running, at every step, we calculate the appropriate amount of the force to the legs so that the robot can balance itself,” said MIT research scientist Hae-Won Park, who wrote the complex algorithm used to control the cheetah, which weighs around 70 pounds — about the same as one of its female feline counterparts.

Perhaps when scientists want to create a robot that sits around, does nothing, and sleeps most of the day, they can model their robots after an ordinary house cat.

To learn more about MIT-s cheetah-inspired robot, click here.

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