locomotion aspect of animals. Recently we are focusing

on quadrupeds, or four-legged animals and we try to

understand how they efficiently run in the field and nature

so that we can take that inspiration and then use it

in our engineering world. So for example we can create

prosthetic legs out of that technology and you could even

make new transportation replacing cars so that you

don't need the road in our world.

The cheetah is the fastest four-legged animal in the world

and we would like to make out robot run fast like a

cheetah.

When we started with our robot, we started to look at

cheetahs' motion and applied its principles to our

mechanical version of a cheetah.

Currently our robot cheetah can run up to 10 mph and

jump over a 33 cm high obstacle. So previously, most

legged robots are powered by internal combustion

engines and then hydraulic transmissions, and those are

very noisy and very inefficient. But people believe that

internal combustion engines and hydraulics are the only

way to make a legged robot run and support itself.

People believe that electric motors are not powerful

enough, so this is the first time we show that an

electrically powered robot can run and jump over

a foot high obstacle. In order to build a dynamic robot like

Cheetah we had to develop everything on the robot

including motors, control system and control algorithms.

Because previous robotic technology is focused on

controlling static motion over the robot.

I think this is a really exciting future where robots can be

quiet and efficient and also powerful and then we might

exceed the muscles' performance in the future.