The Dynamic Systems Lab at the Italian Institute of Technology has created the HyQ2Max, an incredibly versatile and powerful robot that can lift itself up onto its four legs in the most challenging of terrains. According to project leader Claudio Semini, the design was inspired by quadruped animals.
Much like a cat or a goat that is very agile on rough terrain, this robot can in the future help in very unstructured environments, for example after an earthquake, after a tsunami or after a house has collapsed for other reasons; these kind of robots can be applied in an environment where the terrain is difficult and where you don’t want to send people.