The Dallas Zoo's new cheetah cubs will be raised as outreach animals, to visit schools to teach kids about conservatism. That means, among other things, that if this isn't cute enough for you, Winspear and Kamau will be getting a new sibling soon: a black labrador puppy named Amani.

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Taking cues from animals when designing robots is all the rage right now, and the big cats have been a particularly popular creature among engineers. We've looked at fast models designed by DARPA and air-powered examples from Osaka University in Japan. Not to be outdone, researchers in MIT's Biomimetic Robotics Lab have been hard at work on their cheetah-bot for more than a year, but unlike other labs that are aiming to mimic the feline's famous fleetness of foot, Sangbae Kim and his team at MIT are concentrating on building a more energy-efficient robot that can go farther on less power.

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Earlier this week, we shared footage of Boston Dynamics updated Cheetah prototype, but the robotics company isn't stopping there. They're apparently determined to dominate September's robot news cycle with video of the latest improvements to their DARPA funded off-roading automaton LS3 model, better known as Alpha Dog. While Cheetah is built for speed, Alpha Dog is a slower, steadier mechanical marvel, meant to trundle alongside soldiers in the field, and engineered with handling difficult terrain and carrying a heavy load of gear in mind.

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Earlier this year, we brought you the news that the DARPA-funded Cheetah robot, crafted by the robotics masterminds at Boston Dynamics, broke the world's land speed record for robots with an 18 mph sprint. This week, the big cat inspired automaton shattered that record, travelling at a speed-blur inducing 28.3 mph. That's not only faster than any robot has ever moved -- it's faster than the human land speed record of 27.9 mph set by Usain Bolt in 2009. That's right -- there is now a robot faster than the world's fastest human, which means it is certainly capable of chasing down any one of us. You can watch the record setting run after the jump, if you're inclined to get a sneak preview of the end of the world.

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Careful readers will notice that the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has a thing for robotic animals. While those were impressive in their own right, none of them were particularly quick off the mark -- until now. Working with Boston Dynamics, the maker of BigDog, DARPA has produced a robot called Cheetah that can run at speeds up to 18 miles per hour, completely shattering the 1989 legged robot speed record of  13.1 miles per hour.

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Submitted for your approval, a man playing with a butterfly knife in front of a picture of a cheetah, or maybe it's a leopard. He dances deftly to a kicky tune. His shirt is tucked in and his kicks are as white as the new-fallen snow when suddenly, an elderly woman appears on the scene with an ice cold brew. Who is this man? Who is this lady? Is that beer cold? Are you not phased by this at all? It could be that you are living in...

The YouTube Zone.

(via reddit)

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Sometimes, but not always, when things look bad and then get worse it all works out so beautifully. (via Bits & Pieces)

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