These robots look like they belong in the Mos Eisley Cantina to me, and as a Star Wars geek I mean that in a good way. According to CNET.com, the U.S. Military's technology branch, America's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (a.k.a. DARPA), has ordered up a bunch of new two-legged and four-legged robots from a company called Boston Dynamics. The four-legged creatures include something called the Cheetah:
There's also a two-legged human-like robot in the works for DARPA, reports Manufacturing Digital:
Boston Dynamics has already developed a humanoid robot called Petman, although we don't know if Atlas will resemble Petman. But take a look at some video of Petman to get inspired/freaked out. A warning - this may force you to change the way you do the robot dance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67CUudkjEG4&feature=player_embedded
