Thanks to its legs, whose design faithfully reproduces
feline morphology, EPFL’s four-legged “cheetah-cub robot” has the same advantages
as its model: it is small, light and fast. Still in its experimental stage, the
robot will serve as a platform for research in locomotion and biomechanics.
Even though it doesn’t have a head, you can still tell what
kind of animal it is: the robot is definitely modeled upon a cat. Developed by
EPFL’s Biorobotics Laboratory (Biorob), the “cheetah-cub robot,” a small-size
quadruped prototype robot, is described in an article appearing today in the
International Journal of Robotics Research. The purpose of the platform is to
encourage research in biomechanics; its particularity is the design of its
legs, which make it very fast and stable. Robots developed from this concept
could eventually be used in search and rescue missions or for exploration.