The four-legged ‘Cheetah’ robot – which Boston Dynamics developed on behalf of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) – has set a new speed record, outpacing the world’s fastest man --- six-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt.

According to the details shared by Boston Dynamics and DARPA, the new ‘Cheetah’ robot set a speed record of 28.3 miles per hour (mph) over 20 meters; thereby breaking Bolt’s 2009 human record of a 20-meter top speed of 27.78 mph during a 100-meter sprint.

However, the ‘Cheetah’ managed to accomplish his record-setting feat with an advantage vis-à-vis Bolt --- the robot ran on a treadmill. As such, the robot’s running could be compared to running with a tail wind, since a large part of its effort was involved in lifting and swinging its legs swiftly enough to maintain its speed.

With the ‘Cheetah’ robot already having set a new world record for legged robots in March, by running 18 mph on the treadmill, the speed gain which the robot achieved for the latest human-record-breaking feat was essentially an upshot of improved control algorithms and a more powerful hydraulic pump which powered it.

With the ‘Cheetah’ having been developed as part of DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program, Gill Pratt – program manager at DARPA – said in a statement: "Modeling the robot after a cheetah is evocative and inspiring, but our goal is not to copy nature.”