After Usain Bolt dominated the Summer Olympics, Slate’s Josh Levin wrote that for an encore, the unsurpassed Jamaican sprinter should try a new event, like the long jump or the 400 meter.
Here’s another possibility: Make like Garry Kasparov and go up against a machine.
In a video released today, DARPA brags that its Cheetah robot, built by Boston Dynamics, can now best Bolt, reaching 28.3 miles per hour—just a hair faster than Bolt’s peak 27.78, which he ran in 2009. But DARPA admits that its robot had a “slight advantage” because it’s on a treadmill, not a real track.
Perhaps Bolt should take this gloating from DARPA as a challenge and go treadmill-to-treadmill with the Cheetah bot.
The robot’s not as fast as a real cheetah—yet.
