Meet Mabel: The robot that does a 9-minute mile

MABEL here is a fast lady. At 6.8 miles per hour, she’s the quickest human-like runner in the robot world. She is also the owner of some of the freakiest knees, right up there with Dr. Seuss’s ominous pale green pants and the spider-like prancings of BigDog, the defense robot you hope you never meet coming through the woods at night.

Running robots could transport baggage and participate in rescue operations where rugged terrain makes wheeled vehicles useless, which is why DARPA funds projects like the quadruped BigDog, which is already fairly well developed and has a top speed of about 5 mph. MABEL is a biped bot, which means she’s probably less stable than a quadruped, but more able to potentially stand in for humans in activities like climbing stairs (and certainly a more useful instance of human biomimicry than some robots we could name). Watching her strut her stuff around a little indoor track in the video above, you’ll notice the springing motion of her legs, which is very similar to a human running–both spend about 40% of their time in the air, according to her builders, a team of roboticists at University of Michigan.

Ooo, ahh, and pity the lab downstairs.

[skithebumps]

The next thing you know this thing will be dancing. Doing the Macarena or something.

[fleetwood1955]

This Robot works better than the CBS link that plays the freaking video. I went to Youtube and their direct link works fine but when I play via the CBS link there is nothing but lag, lag, lag! You would think that as much money that CBS has they could fix this problem which is an ongoing problem! Other CBS video links are the same, jumpy and laggy, I avoid their video links about 90% of the time because they suck. I have hope but nothing will happen,nobody gives a care.

[tsigili]

Ya know, I have zero use for a robot. None.

[rwsmith29456]

That's not running free. It's attached to the center pole by a frickin boom. Interesting motions, but nothing to write home about.