Behold the Cheetah Robot. The Singularity Is Nigh!

Big defense budgets during the aughts financed the deployment of thousands of robots, including unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles, to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon's fascination with robots hasn't slackened even in these more austere times. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is funding Boston Dynamics' development of a prototype robot called the Cheetah. On March 5, the company announced that the cat-like bot managed to gallop 18 mph on a treadmill, setting a new land speed record for legged robots. Boston Dynamics, a 1992 spinoff from MIT that's headed by Marc Raibert, has also developed a quadrupedal pack robot called the Legged Squad Support System (LS3).