Robot Dog Named BlackPanther2 Now Runs as Fast as Usain Bolt

A quadrupedal robot called BlackPanther2 has hit speeds of up to 13.2 meters per second on a treadmill and 11.65 meters per second outdoors — results the authors describe as a new state-of-the-art and, to the best of their knowledge, a world record for quadrupedal robot locomotion. The 36.5-kilogram robot got there through a high-speed locomotion framework designed to reduce sim-to-real discrepancies and stabilize learning over a wide command distribution. A refined actuator model explicitly captures high-speed voltage coupling and magnetic saturation, giving a more accurate representation of the torque-speed envelope, while a reinforcement learning framework with a two-stage curriculum and adaptive command scheduling keeps training stable. The authors say the results highlight the importance of accurate actuator modeling in preventing non-physical policy exploitation, and that adaptive command scheduling improves robustness without sacrificing performance. The paper, by Yucheng Tao and five other authors, was accepted for publication in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.