No, this isn’t a Camera Crtters meme entry. This is about a robot named Cheetah that I saw in Scientific American magazine. that can travel four legged over ground. At least on a treadmill.

Cheetah is being developed by the DARPA “Defense Advanced Projects Agency” for possible military use. That’s all great and everything but can’t we use this technology for better uses? Like to help people rather than assisting in killing people? Don’t get me wrong, I want our troops to have the best of whatever is available as soon as we can get it to them, but still.

Ho about rescues in really rugged country. Rig one of these puppies up with a GPS and a detailed map and let it go find people people who need help. Or patrolling our borders perhaps looking for groups of illegal immigrants who might be dying of thirst in the Arizona desert. Or maybe for fire departments to send into burning buildings where they don’t know if anybody is in there or not. Or how about carrying tourists down and back out of the Grand Canyon and other pack trips.

I’ll tell you what though they have a lot of development work on this device. How is it going to deal with mud, sand, rocks, and water? They are going to have to seal the thing up. Plus where will it get its power? Batteries or a gasoline motor, or what? It’ll be fun to see where they go with this thing. Plus for military uses it seems quite noisy.

What do you think? You have any ideas for something like this?