The OutRunner robot is one of the fastest electronic devices of its type in the world. This new six-legged robot can travel up to 20 miles per hour on level ground. Internal batteries allow the vehicle to travel for up to two hours before recharging.
Legs on the OutRunner provide the capability for the robot to travel over hills and rough terrain. The craft stays balanced as it travels over various terrains. Direction of the craft is carried out by humans, using a remotely-controlled system. When operators command the OutRunner to turn, the center of mass of the robot shifts, which turns the robot in a similar way to a bicycle.
"One of the hardest things with bipedal locomotion is swinging the leg forward," Sebastien Cotton, head research scientist at Robotics Unlimited, told the press. "That's a very complicated motion, so we took a different approach to simplify the mechanics by having the legs spinning."
Robotics Unlimited designed the OutRunner. Instead of "walking" like a human or insect, the device uses its six legs to perform cartwheels, moving the OutRunner from place to place.
"OutRunner robots are biologically-inspired... By having a center of mass lower than the leg axis of rotation, OutRunner robots exploit a buoyancy effect, making them inherently stable and eliminating the need for expensive sensors and complex control algorithms," the group wrote on their Kickstart page.
Legs on the OutRunner are able to store kinetic energy, and release it during different phases, as it moves around the robot. This makes the two-hour charge of the battery possible. A typical radio-controlled car can only run for about 20 minutes before it needs to be re-charged.
OutRunner is not yet available for sale to the general public, but developers hope to make the robot available soon. A Kickstarter campaign is raising money to help develop the robot for commercial purposes. So far, that project has received over $45,000 in pledges from more than 175 people. However, that amount is still less than one-third of the team's goal of $150,000.
Boston Dynamics, another robot designer, lately announced the development of their Cheetah robot, able to obtain speeds of 29 miles per hour. This device is billed as the fastest robot in the world. That device was funded, in part, by military technology developers DARPA.
"Since our first prototypes, we have come a long way and have been able to overcome many challenges. We have been able to do what really few people have been able to do: get a robot to run while selling it at an affordable price," developers of the OutRunner added on their Kickstarter page.
Robotics Unlimited released a video of the OutRunner.
