MIT’s Cheetah 3 robot built for Fukushima

TechCrunch features an interesting article about an ever-evolving robot that can "save lives" and has new features that were developed with the Fukushima nuclear crisis in mind. MIT's Cheetah is described as a four-legged robot that can run, autonomously, at speeds of up to 14 miles per hour, jump over obstacles and respond to instructions when performing search and rescue operations. In its latest iteration, the Cheetah 3, it can also help in a nuclear crisis. “Our vision changed to wanting to use this in a real situation, to dispatch it to Fukushima,” professor Sang-bae Kim of MIT's Biometrics Lab told TechCrunch. “We want to use this in a place where we don’t want to use humans." Full article here. Meanwhile, the MIT video below shows the Cheetah 2 in full flight.

Let's hope it has more success than some of the robotics developed to deal with the Fukushima crisis to date.  

​​Video: Haewon Park, Patrick Wensing and Sangbae Kim