The robotics firm Boston Dynamics revealed an interesting new innovation on Friday, a four-legged robot called WildCat which, according to a recent article from the IEEE Spectrum, has the ability to dash, gallop, and bound around at speeds of up to 16 miles per hour without any auxiliary assistance.

Of course, Boston Dynamics is hardly a stranger to quadruped robots like this one. The company’s current robotic staple also includes “the Cheetah,” another four-legged mechanism that can reach speeds of up to 29 miles per hour – a top speed that, as Boston Dynamics note on their website, is “a bit faster than Usain Bolt.” Since Usain Bolt is a Jamaican Olympic sprinter considered in some circles to be the fastest runner ever, being a “bit faster” than him is nothing to sneeze at.

However, the Cheetah is limited. The robot’s top speeds have only been reached inside, on a treadmill, while the Cheetah remained tethered to an “off-board hydraulic pump” and a “boom-like device that keep it running in the center of the treadmill.” The new WildCat robot is Boston Dynamics’ outdoor update on the Cheetah. It may not have reached speeds anywhere near as high as the Cheetah’s in its first field tests, but the WildCat has one distinct advantage: its speeds were recorded outside, untethered from auxiliary hydraulics.

It is highly likely that Boston Dynamics will look to boost the speed of the WildCat in the future. For now, however, it appears that the company’s robot technology is not quite capable of reaching the Cheetah’s soaring speeds without an outside power source. More on-board power has certainly been added to the WildCat in order to support outdoor, untethered environments, but as always, there has been a trade off: the WildCat is significantly bulkier than the Cheetah was.

Regardless of how long it will take Boston Dynamics to troubleshoot the issues currently facing the WildCat, there is little question as to whether or not the company has what it takes to make stunning leaps forward in robotic technology. Another four-legged robot of theirs, the larger and bulkier LS3, has no impressive land speed records to speak of, but makes up for its slowness with a rugged design, and more importantly, a sensory obstacle avoidance ability that speaks volumes about Boston Dynamics’ artificial intelligence abilities. If the company can combine the speed of the Cheetah, the intelligence and durability of the LS3, and the untethered abilities of the WildCat, the result will likely become the new gold standard for robotics.

“WildCat is a four-legged robot being developed to run fast on all types of terrain. So far WildCat has run at about 16 mph on flat terrain using bounding and galloping gaits. The video shows WildCat’s best performance so far. WildCat is being developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA’s M3 program,” wrote Boston Dynamics in a description of the video.