There’s something quite awe-inspiring about robot dogs, and I mean that both in the sense of “awesome”, but also the older school interpretation of awe as in inspiring fear.
Behold South Korea’s HOUND, a truly awesome beast in both respects, and now officially the world’s fastest robot dog:
HOUND is kennelled – possibly not for long at the pace it’s able to set — at the Dynamic Robot Control and Design Laboratory within the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, South Korea, which is where this real world video was shot. To put some numbers to what you just saw, HOUND there was being a very good and very fast boy, hitting an average speed of 11.26 mph, or 18.12kph.
To make this robot dog story just that little bit scarier, while obviously everyone’s best varies – and diet, age, gender and genetics have a role too – most humans can run at around 10 to 15 mph, but only if they’re at rather high levels of fitness. Look around you. Be honest. Are most people at rather good levels of fitness? They are not. Usain Bolt is probably OK for a while now, but the rest of us are in deep, deep trouble.
But hey, it’s not like it could get any faster than that, right?
“In simulation, it can accelerate to even higher speeds, but we haven’t tested it in the real world yet” said Young-Ha Shin, HOUND’s designer to Guinness World Records, who officially certified HOUND as the world’s fastest robot quadruped over 100 metres.
Naturally, science never sleeps – and presumably, being a robot dog, neither does HOUND – so it’s not just a decent sprinter, with the capability to climb slopes up to 22°, walk 3.2 km or traverse a 35-cm-high obstacle. They’re going to continue to work on HOUND too, so even if you do figure you’re faster than it now, it feels like it’s only a matter of time. Combine that with Robot Dogs that can hear us and use ChatGPT to respond, or Robot Dogs that can make art and, well…
I knew there was a reason I’m a cat person.