microrobert
06-18-2013, 03:38 PM
Cheetah cub: Headless running robot cat could aid in rescue research
Here’s a cat that will do more whirring than purring: a robotic cheetah cub designed to trot at the fastest clip of any legged machine in its class. The mechanical running feline, described in the International Journal of Robotics Research, could help blaze a trail for engineers designing fast and agile rescue robots.
The headless, four-legged robot is about the size of a house cat, and its legs were designed with a typical kitty in mind, said lead author Alexander Sprowitz, a biomechanical roboticist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The 2.2-pound, roughly 8-inch robot has legs made of three segments proportioned similarly to a cat’s, where the top and bottom segments are positioned roughly parallel. The tendons are made of springs and the muscles are made of small motors called actuators.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-robot-cat-cheetah-cub-running-rescue-bioinspired-20130617,0,6767240.story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWlzMIl7E48
Here’s a cat that will do more whirring than purring: a robotic cheetah cub designed to trot at the fastest clip of any legged machine in its class. The mechanical running feline, described in the International Journal of Robotics Research, could help blaze a trail for engineers designing fast and agile rescue robots.
The headless, four-legged robot is about the size of a house cat, and its legs were designed with a typical kitty in mind, said lead author Alexander Sprowitz, a biomechanical roboticist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The 2.2-pound, roughly 8-inch robot has legs made of three segments proportioned similarly to a cat’s, where the top and bottom segments are positioned roughly parallel. The tendons are made of springs and the muscles are made of small motors called actuators.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-robot-cat-cheetah-cub-running-rescue-bioinspired-20130617,0,6767240.story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWlzMIl7E48