- Who
- Cheetah 3, Biomimetic Robotics Lab, MIT, Sangbae Kim
- What
- 78.74 centimetre(s)
- Where
- United States (Cambridge)
- When
The highest standing jump by a quadruped robot is 78.74 cm (31 inches), achieved by Cheetah 3, a robot built at the Biomimetic Robotics Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2017. This feat was revealed in a video published on 4 July 2018.
Cheetah's jumping technique involves two carefully cordinated, natural-looking movements. First it pushes down with its front two legs, pivoting its body from horizontal to near-vertical while squatting down on its rear legs. A moment later, when its center of balance is in the right position, it extends its rear legs and launches itself upwards.
Cheetah 3 was designed by Professor Sangbae Kim. Like its contemporaries AnyMal and SpotMini, Cheetah is designed to be a versatile platform that can be adapted to fulfill many possible roles including site inspection or search and rescue.
The current focus of Kim's team is on what they call "blind locomotion", which is the ability to navigate complex terrain using only tactile feedback. Once fully realised, this ability would allow Cheetah to move even when its vision is obscured (by smoke, dust or dense foliage, for example). It also increases the speed of the robot's gait (right now, many robots get around using a mode of navigation akin to a human walking everywhere while staring at their own feet).
