The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been working on robots for a long time, but this latest one is a both a healthy dose of scary and cool.
Here are the stats on the robot:
— Near-human anthropometry
— 2 arms, 2 legs, torso, and head
— 28 hydraulically actuated joints with closed-loop position and force control
— On-Board real-time control computer
— Electric power and network tether
— On-board hydraulic pump and thermal management
— Crash protection
— Modular wrists accept 3rd party hands
— Head-Mounted sensor package with Light Detection and Ranging technology, stereo sensors, dedicated sensor electronics and perception algorithms
Now here's a video of some of the robot's evolution, to include attempts to knock it down:
Teams in the Darpa Robotics challenge first had to program the robot to move in a virtual space. Now their next challenge, slated for December, is to program (or "teach") the bot to move in real space.