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Walking Robot Breaks Record, Inches That Much Closer to World Domination

by Matt Evans on July 21, 2010 at 05:16 PM

Cornell's Ranger robot
We can't help but admire at a distance when robot technology advances in any measure. Call it habit, fear or just pent-up animosity from watching way too many sci-fi films, but the truth of the matter is robots are frightening. Take, for instance, Cornell University's Ranger robot, which just set the world record for untethered robotic walking, going strong for 14.3 miles in only 11 hours. Yikes, that's enough time for this guy to flee a good distance from a crime scene while everyone is sound asleep. Granted, students navigated the robot via remote control as he circled the Barton Hall indoor track 108.5 times, taking 70,000 steps in total.

Okay, so maybe a walking robot is safer and more useful than a lot of his more terrifying counterparts. What's the worst he can do? Walk a half-marathon? In fact, he is sort of cute, in a Wall-E way. However, we're not so sure that positioning him in front of a child for the above picture wasn't meant to falsely convey the message that he could remain but a few feet from children without taking them down as an afternoon snack . [From: Tech News Daily, via: Live Science]

Tags: cornell, CornellUniversity, RangerRobot, robot, robotics, top, track, untethered, walking, WalkingRobot

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