Wildcat: why is it so scary?

Boston Dynamics, the company that’s singlehandedly trying to hasten the fall of humankind with its incredible robot technology, has just unveiled the WildCat – the next generation of its Cheetah robot.

“WildCat is a four-legged robot being developed to run fast on all types of terrain. So far WildCat has run at about 16 mph on flat terrain using bounding and galloping gaits. The video shows WildCat’s best performance so far. WildCat is being developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA’s M3 program,” says the company.

Sure, the Cheetah has been clocked at 28.3 mph, a bit faster than Usain Bolt. But that’s only when it’s running on a high-speed treadmill, powered by an off-board hydraulic pump. The WildCat, as seen in the terrifying video above, is untethered and coming at you down a dark alley.

Or at least it is in my nightmares.