These are really impressive from a mechanical engineering point of view, but in all these demos the powerplant is not on the frame. Instead, power is fed via wire, making it stationary. Its a little disingenuous to claim it goes 28 mph when it doesn't even power itself. I'd love to see what real speeds they can get out of these things with a powerplant installed, especially over mixed terrain.

Right now, this is like running a Tesla with a very long extension cable and claiming absurd 0-60 times. Instead, tell me how well it operates with a battery or an engine and all the extra weight and engineering accouterments that requires.

That's a great leg imitation and obstacle tolerance but does it really count as running when it's permanently attached to a stationary object?

A lot of people seem to take issue with the lag of on-board power. OutRunner i a running robot with on board power, that have reached some impressive numbers while running outdoors.

The projekt is on kickstarter right now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/138364285/outrunner-the...

I think people are missing the point about the attached boom arm. They're working on the mechanics of the bipedal motion before worrying about making an autonomous robot.

Randall Munroe's nightmare has come true.

Have you ever created something which requires somewhat esoteric knowledge to create and understand, and then you show it to someone who doesn't have that knowledge, and you find yourself disappointed with their reaction, and disappointed that they don't understand enough to know that they don't understand? Made up example:

"Hey look, I designed a CPU and created a basic computer and wrote an OS...it's basic I know but..."

"Can it run Call of Duty? Xbox is better"

"That's not the...point...nm"

That's what this thread feels like. Except I would have expected HN commenters to have enough insight to know that they don't understand enough to be commenting.

Link to video. If there was embedded video on that page, it wasn't working for me. Here is a video I found of it on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/lPEg83vF_Tw

I'm a little disappointed that its tethered... Then again, having little robots that run faster than any human be tethered is probably a good precaution just in case we ever achieve singularity.... ;)

Yeah, but Usain Bolt has on-board power.

Are we supposed to ignore the arm the "robot" is attached to? Set that thing out on a road and let it run and I will be impressed.

So does a car. Whats your point?

Is the "dynamic balance control" really a large gyroscope, with rotational acceleration to control falling forward and backward?

Nonetheless, I was really hoping to see what happens whet it falls down while running at high speed on the treadmill.

28.58 mph == 45.995 km/h [0], BTW.

[0] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=28.58+mph+in+kilometers...

It is surprising that such things have not been created before. It's a few legs supported on a sideways axis. One would expect it would not have been hard to do it at least 50 years ago.

But in robotics everything is about 1000x harder than one would naively assume, it seems. (Judging by how my vacuum robot with a friggin' laser scanner can't find its docking station from 1 meter away.)