I have fond memories of hanging out in the MIT Leg Lab before they closed it down the year before I left Cambridge. Some of my rockets are made from carbon fiber tube stock they threw out. They made really awesome robots that could walk, hop, and correct for unexpected disturbances. Apparently, since the closure of the Leg Lab, a spinoff called Boston Dynamics has emerged and is still pushing the limits of robotic equilibrium management and locomotion. My old friend Lukas crawled out from under the rubble of Atlanta to send me this awesome video of one of their products, a quadruped called "Big Dog" that is shown here traversing uneven slopes, ice, snow banks, piles of bricks, and occasionally being kicked in the side. The control problem here is so amazingly difficult that, even though this sometimes looks like a newly-born horse, its performance is just incredible.

See also: this parody video of Big Dog.