IT WAS BIG news this past week when Google bought Boston Dynamics, an engineering company that creates mobile research robots for the US military. This is the ninth robotics company that Google has purchased in the last six months.
Boston Dynamics features nine robots on its website, and some of them are almost unbelievable. They can crawl, jump, climb, and gallop, even over tough terrain.
Meet some of the most amazing (and kind of creepy) robots that Boston Dynamics has created:
Atlas: The Humanoid Robot
Atlas is a humanoid robot that can walk through rough terrain like a human and even climb using its hands. It can lift and carry things, and it has cameras and a laser range finder on its head. When hit from the side, the robot manages to keep its balance.
Check out Atlas in action:
Cheetah: The fastest robot in the world
The Cheetah set a new record for the speediest robot. It can run faster than 29 miles per hour, completely destroying the previous record, set in 1989 at MIT, of 13.1 miles per hour. That’s faster than Jamaican sprint champion Usain Bolt.
The Cheetah is powered by an off-board hydraulic pump, meaning that it can’t operated untethered.
Watch the Cheetah sprint:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chPanW0QWhA
WildCat: The free-running Cheetah
The WildCat is Boston Dynamics’ free-running iteration of the Cheetah. Although it hasn’t reached Cheetah’s insane speeds yet, the four-legged robot can run up to 16 miles per hour on all types of terrain.
The Wildcat can gallop, bound, and turn quickly.
Big Dog: The huge robot that can carry almost 400lbs
BigDog is perhaps Boston Dynamics’ most bizarre-looking bot.
About the size of a large dog or a small mule, BigDog can walk, climb and run through rubble, mud, water, and snow and carry heavy loads (up to 340 pounds).
Check out BigDog climbing in the woods, jogging, and, kind of hilariously, slipping on ice:
RiSE: The robot that can climb up walls
RiSE is six-legged robot that can climb up vertical terrains like walls, trees, and fences using its micro-claws. The robot uses its tail to help it balance and can change its posture to conform to the curvature of the climbing surface. RiSE is 0.25 meters long, weighs 2 kilograms, and travels 0.3 meters per second.
Watch RiSE climb a building and a tree:
- Jillian D’Onfro
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