MIT Biomimetic Robotics Lab · robot dog
MIT Cheetah 3
A 90 lb (40.8 kg) electric quadruped that ran, jumped and climbed cluttered stairs using touch and balance alone.
- Price
- —Not published
- Height
- —Not published
- Weight
- 40.8 kgHeavier than 61%
- Payload
- —Not published
- Speed
- —Not published
- Battery
- —Not published
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Why it matters
Showed 'blind' locomotion, climbing debris-covered stairs by touch without cameras.
Real-world use
No customers or deployments reported yet.
Maker
MIT Biomimetic Robotics LabUniversity lab · Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesDARPA-funded Cheetah work
How it stacks up
Against other robot dogs that publish the figure. Pick a measure.
MIT Cheetah 3 is heavier than 61% of the 41 other robot dogs that publish a weight. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
Not published by the maker: height, speed, payload, joints, battery, price.
Public attention
A historic robot: no longer sold or in use, so it is not ranked against current machines.
- No Wikipedia article of its own yet
- 1 news story from reputable press listed on this page
Measures how much people read and write about a robot, not how good it is. Measured 2026-10-14; same method for every robot. How it is measured
What’s inside
The parts the company has talked about publicly.
- Movement
- Walks on legs
- How it runs
- Assisted. Researchers steered it while it balanced, ran and climbed stairs blind by itself using touch.
- Actuators & motors
- Electric leg motors used to sense leg forces directly (proprioceptive actuation); wider hip range than Cheetah 2
- Sensors & vision
- Blind locomotion: gyroscopes, accelerometers and joint position sensing, no cameras for walking; cameras added later for mapping
- Materials & build
- About 41 kg (90 lb), Labrador-sized
- AI & software
- Contact-detection algorithm estimating ground contact per leg, plus model-predictive control planning about half a second ahead, updated 20 times a second
- Other details
- Funded partly by Naver, Toyota Research Institute, Foxconn and the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research
Lineage
Every MIT Biomimetic Robotics Lab machine in order.
Watch MIT Cheetah 3
Made, sold and where
Unit counts are usually company figures; analysts often disagree.
- Price
- Not published
- How to get one
- No official buying page found
- Built
- Research robot
- Sold or delivered
- not sold
- Where it is sold or used
- MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
News
The latest 1, newest first. Summaries are ours; tap through for the original.
- MIT's blind Cheetah 3 climbs stairs
MIT showed Cheetah 3 crossing rough terrain and stairs using touch-like feedback instead of cameras.
MIT News
Sources
Figures come from press coverage. Every link below backs something on this page.
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