Boston Dynamic’s been keeping dog lovers happy throughout their steady development of BigDog, a robot with uncannily canine gait and maneuvers. Now, feline aficionados can finally rejoice as WildCat makes its way into the robot world.

However this is not the the first time that Boston Dynamics has taken a crack at cat-like bots — WildCat’s predecessor is the Cheetah bot which boasted a running speed of 45 km/hour. While this machine’s no slow poke, it can currently only run at about 26 km/hour but its truly biomimetic design should have it up to speed with real-world wild cats in the near future.

As part of US’ Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program, robots like WildCat are being developed to increase the efficacy of military operations across a great range of missions.

And even though cats and dogs don’t normally get along in the real-world, humans may choose to have their robot counterparts working together. Machines like BigDog could be charged with the task of carrying heavy loads over long periods time, while ones like the WildCat might be used when there’s a need to maneuver with speed and agility.

But let’s not forget androids! If you were fascinated by Boston Dynamic’s PETMAN, it’s high time you check out its upgraded version Atlas. It may look a little scary in the video below but researchers are confident that bots like these might be able to help humans out in life-threatening situations.