How is this a quadruped and not a wheeled robot with just a funny tire design?

There's an entire paragraph in the article that discusses that.

Well, the article at least acknowledges how questionable this application of the term is.

"Whether or not this really is a legged robot (or a quadruped) is perhaps debatable: these are wheel-legs, more commonly known as whegs."

I was certainly expecting/hoping for something more like Boston Dynamics cheetah [0].

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chPanW0QWhA

Creative marketing.

am i the only one who gets annoyed by every "body-length : speed" and "body-weight : carrying-capacity" comparison? these things don't scale, people! it's not amazing.

is it amazing that a spider can freefall from 10,000 ft (millions of body lengths) and survive? no, it isn't.

To be fair, every time I watch Darwin Beetles throwing each other out of giant trees, I'm a little amazed.

2.2 meters per second isn't bad for something that tiny. Put a little bomb payload on there and you've got yourself a nice targeted killing machine that'll get the target well before anyone notices. Question is, how much weight (battery, camera, bomb) can it carry before it slows down to be too slow to be useful?

Spiders are great, but we can't make them do things for us like this thing can.

I'd buy one of these as a cat toy. Don't know if it'd work out, but something like it ought to.

While reading the not-very-interesting featured article, I saw a link that ultimately led me to this, which HN might find more interesting:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/barobo/linkbot-create-wi...

Modular robots for education, only $140! (I think they might have a pricing problem)

I don't really understand my brain's response to small things.

Small dog/cat -> cute

Tarantula -> horrible

Small robot that goes as fast as a tarantula -> cute?

Anyway, that's pretty cool. They should put some sticky/rubbery material on the tips of the legs to improve traction on smooth surfaces.

It's not relative to absolute size -- it's relative to the average size of the thing. Baby elephants are cute, even if full-grown dogs, being much smaller, aren't.

A tarantula is not so much a small thing as it is a HUGE spider. Tiny spiders are actually cute. At least, as cute as spiders get, anyway.

I don't know man ... seeing it zip across the carpet totally gave me an, "OMG that spider is coming to get me!" vibe.

  Only 6 millimeters in size each, the motors output 1.5 
  watts of power at 40,000 RPM, driving the individual whegs 
  through 16:1 planetary gearheads.

Huh. What's their max operating temp? How long can they run at 100% before overheating?

"What makes the robot wicked fast is the fact that it's got four independent drive motors, each one of which has a power to weight ratio that's absolutely bananas. Only 6 millimeters in size each, the motors output 1.5 watts of power at 40,000 RPM, driving the individual whegs through 16:1 planetary gearheads. They're not cheap (hundreds of dollars each), but they make for one crazy little robot. And of course, independently driven whegs make the robot smaller, lighter, simpler to steer, and generally more efficient overall"

What are my current alternatives if I want to build something similar and I'm only willing to spend say $50 per drive motor?

Quadruped my ass.

Install off road RC car paddle wheels on this thing and it will perform the same or better. It might even float! "Four leg robot fastest on water." Right.

https://www.google.com/search?q=paddle+tires+for+rc+truck...

I am disgusted by this. University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins ought to be ashamed. It's an insult to anyone working on real legged locomotion. Dishonest at the very least. And, if the research is funded with public money tagged for legged locomotion this is fraudulent as well. Sad.

Depending of the definition of the "leg" this robot has actually 4*6=24 legs.

There are knobby protrusions on my car tires. By the definition at hand, my car has hundreds of legs.

They're wheels, not legs.

Maybe every transistor is a leg!

This is one pretty pathetic misrepresentation. Only a kid could call this toy "car" a robot.

It is a robot, just not a quadrupedal robot.

That reminds me of this Bipedal human powered vehicle:

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/cast-off-shoes-make-tires-for...

The animal! The animal! Can anything stop the animal? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IRCaE3ks6Y

Am I missing something? All I see is an rc car.

I want one that's about a hundred times this size.