When it comes to robotics, the animal kingdom is always a source of inspiration and biomimicry is an extremely common phenomenon. After making robot versions of animals as varied as an octopus, an African primate called galago and a bat in the past 11 months alone -- always with the purpose of fine-tuning our machines -- researchers have now turned to the world's fastest land animal, the cheetah. Geert Folkertsma from the University of Twente in the Netherlands built a scaled-down version of the cheetah for his doctoral thesis. Adjusting for scale, the robot uses about 15 percent more energy than a real cheetah, which is very efficient, energy-wise. It weighs about 2.5 kilograms (5.5 pounds) and measures about 30 centimeters (one foot) long, and can travel at the speed of 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) an hour.

Engineers have developed a prototype cheetah robot. They have constructed a scaled-down robotic version of the fastest land animal in the world, with a view to replicating its movements.