"Cheetah is designed to be a four-legged robot with a flexible spine and articulated head."

Most of you live in cheetah-free neighborhoods, but it doesn’t always have to be that way. Boston Dynamics has won contract to produce a cheetah bot. An excerpt from a Wired story:

“Boston Dynamics, maker of the Army’s BigDog robotic mule, announced today that Darpa has awarded it a contract to build a much faster and more fearsome animal-like robot, Cheetah.

As the name implies, Cheetah is designed to be a four-legged robot with a flexible spine and articulated head (and potentially a tail) that runs faster than the fastest human. In addition to raw speed, Cheetah’s makers promise that it will have the agility to make tight turns so that it can ‘zigzag to chase and evade’ and be able to stop on a dime.”

Boston Dynamics’ BigDog bot: