Boston Dynamics' LittleDog robot struts its stuff in the video below. Note the dynamic double-support gait - it can support itself on just two of its four legs.
(LittleDog robot navigates rough terrain)
The experimental setup includes overhead cameras that help LittleDog analyze the terrain and plan each step. The LittleDog system is actually learning to traverse these varied and rough surfaces by computing a "cost" for each step, which compares the distance moved versus the potential for a fall.
SF readers have been looking forward to this real-world development for almost sixty years, having read about the robass with "fast-plodding, articulated legs, so necessary since roads had degenerated" from Anthony Boucher's 1951 story The Quest For St. Aquin
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.' - Rog Philips, 1950.
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Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'