DARPA's Pet-Proto robot climbs, balances, jumps, comes to get you

While Boston Dynamics' Cheetah has already premiered, speeding along on its robot-friendly treadmill, we've now got a better glimpse at how the similarly DARPA-funded human-hunting obstacle-scaling Atlas fares, courtesy of its ancestor. That's the Pet-Proto you can see in the video below, balancing and leaping across narrow terrain, conducting its own "autonomous decision-making" and keeping upright -- all very important points for DARPA's own Robotics Challenge, a competition where winners will gain access to their very own modified version of the Atlas for future disaster response tests. Watch the Pet-Proto gradually advance towards camera right after the break. And we'll sleep with one eye open.