IT'S like Prawn on a Treadmill, except terrifying and deadly.
Remember that old stand-up staple about how Daleks aren't scary because they can't go up stairs?
So... good luck even making it to a flight of stairs if DARPA's robot cheetah locks on to you.
If you don't know who DARPA - the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - is, this is an excellent example of what they spend their billions in research grants on.
They actually built the cheetah last year in order to see how closely a machine could mimic nature as part of what they call their Maximum Mobility and Manipulation program.
DARPA won't directly say there's a military application for RoboCheetah itself, but the program was kicked off in order to address mobility limitations of bomb-disposal bots.
"If the current limitations on mobility and manipulation capabilities of robots can be overcome," DARPA says, "robots could much more effectively assist warfighters across a greater range of missions."
The widespread consensus last year was that RoboCheetah V1 was mobile enough just as it was to frighten the bejesus out of us.
Now DARPA's added speed.
In tests this week, RoboCheetah V2 smashed the land speed record for a robot, hitting 29km/h on a treadmill. The old record of 21km/h had stood since 1989.
If you're wondering how fast 29km/h is for a human, then yeah, most Olympic sprinters could outrun it. But for how long?
Watch the video. Laugh at how RoboCheetah starts out looking like it's running backwards, awkwardly.
Nod in admiration as the treadmill ramps up and the fluidity of movement becomes apparent.
Then scream silently in horror at your desk when you imagine the day it comes crashing out of your nightmare and begins its relentless pursuit of you through a post-Apocalyptic cityscape.
We'll take Prawn on a Treadmill any day.
Originally published as Robot Cheetah used to dodge. Now it hunts