MIT Cheetah 3

Not for saleLab research platform, funded by Naver, Toyota Research Institute, Foxconn and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Not for sale (research)Guinness jump recordBlind stair climbingProprioceptive actuators

Not for saleShipping: N/A. Never sold. It stayed a research robot in MIT's lab.

MIT News ↗Guinness World Records ↗IROS 2018 paper ↗

Overview

Holder of the Guinness World Record for the highest jump by a quadruped robot, a 78.74 cm (31 in) standing leap onto a raised platform, made in 2017 and revealed in July 2018. It climbed stairs and stepped over debris blind, since a contact detection algorithm sensed each footfall through its motors instead of cameras. Its custom motors with single-stage planetary gears control leg forces without force sensors. The same actuator approach was scaled down for the Mini Cheetah in 2019. A convex model-predictive controller let it trot, bound, pace, pronk and gallop at up to 3 m/s. The lab aimed it at inspection work in hazardous sites such as damaged power plants, but it was never sold.

Specifications

Category	Quadrupeds · Research & legacy platforms
Released	2018
Country	USA
Availability	Not for sale (research)
Jumping Robots	Ranked #6 by jump height
Programmability	No programmability
Built-in autonomy	None / scripted · Moves only when controlled, or plays preset motions
LLM support	None · No built-in LLM and no public SDK to connect one.
MuJoCo simulation	None found · No MuJoCo model found. MIT's Cheetah-Software ships Cheetah 3 meshes and a dynamics model for its own simulator only. Cheetah-Software ↗
NVIDIA Isaac simulation	None found · Nothing found.
Gazebo simulation	None found · Nothing found. No public URDF of Cheetah 3 exists.
Best for	Professionals & labs
Vision sensors	No vision sensors
Actuators	Brushless / direct-drive motors
Audio	No audio
Compute type	x86 PC (Intel / AMD)
Compute	Embedded PC with a 2nd-gen Intel Core i7 laptop CPU (Ubuntu with a real-time kernel), plus ARM Cortex-A8 leg controllers over EtherCAT
Weight	45 kg (about 90 lb). Body 60 × 25.6 × 20 cm with 34 cm leg links
Speed	3 m/s forward, 1 m/s sideways and 180°/s turning with convex MPC (2018)
DOF	12 (3 per leg), all with near-identical proprioceptive actuators (230 N·m peak, 21 rad/s, 7.67:1 planetary gear plus a 1.15:1 chain to the knee)
Sensors	IMU and joint encoders only for walking, with no force, torque or foot contact sensors. Cameras were added later to map larger obstacles (model unconfirmed). 450 Wh LiPo battery, about 2 h runtime
SDK	None public. An operator sends velocity commands over LCM. MIT's open-source Cheetah-Software (C++) includes a Cheetah 3 model and configs